Possible Possibilities
by UmLikeYeah
Summary: Ariadne-centric POV - includes events/scenes leading up to the job and reasons why she decides to throw her hat in the ring in the first place.  There's a good measure of interactions with Arthur, too.
1. Unreality Bites

I don't own any of the characters mentioned below - I'm just liberally borrowing them, as with the lyrics to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

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**Chapter One – Unreality Bites**

_Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?_

_Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality…_

_- Bohemian Rhapsody_, Queen

Later, when she searches back in the recesses of her memory, it occurs to Ariadne there had been a rainstorm the first time they met. Recollection of this detail was a careful rewinding; she the bloodhound sleuth crouching, combing and sometimes using a machete to cut through the thick vines of perception and imagination. It had been raining outside because she had come in with soaked clothes and hair. The place Cobb had directed her to show up at could only be described as decrepit, even by the most optimistic of realtors. She stares at the dirty brick building, with its tall chimneys dusted black from years of grime and it takes all her willpower not to turn around and walk away. It is only her implicit trust in Miles Laraby that propels her through the rusted gated entrance that is so cheerily framed in barbed wire. Walking the stretch from the sidewalk to the entrance, she looks around the dirt yard and imagines small children in Dickensian garb batting around a ball with their chimney brushes during the few moments they're not sticking their little hands into dangerous, Industrial-era machinery.

Then she's at the front doors – two of them, wooden, standing at three times her height. She makes a fist and knocks before noticing the buzzer. He must have heard her, though, because it is altogether too soon after she presses the smudged white button that Arthur opens one of the doors. He gives her a full once over with his eyes before stepping aside. He doesn't say a word as she passes him while simultaneously wringing the rainwater from her hair. He's gone before she can say anything. For a few minutes, she stands alone in the large abandoned reception area and moves to shutter the door from letting in any more wind and rain.

After a few minutes pass and he has not returned, Ariadne wonders if he is Cobb's poorly trained manservant. Though she's only met with Cobb the one time for no more than 15 minutes the previous day, she somehow doubts he possesses that kind of pretension. Then Arthur materializes from around a corner, carrying a white towel in one hand. By this point, she has pulled the elastic band from her wrist to twist her hair into a pony tail, a futile attempt to curb the fine baby hairs on her temple from curling around her face. "Here, you'll catch a cold if you don't dry up first. I'm Arthur." He holds out his hand, and she uses the towel to wipe the moisture from her own before taking his. "You must be Ariadne, the architecture student."

"I am. Where's Cobb?" She refrains from asking his position, and he doesn't divulge any more about himself as he leads her up a flight of stairs.

Cobb is sitting in a large, cleared workroom and staring intently at a laptop screen. At the sound of their footsteps, the laptop screen clicks down and he pushes himself away from the desk, straightening his posture. "Good, you're on time. That's important." He shakes her hand and then nods at Arthur. "You've met the point man, too." He raises an eyebrow. "And you passed."

"With flying colors", Arthur murmurs, hands in his pants pockets while he rocks gently on his heels.

She turns to look at both of them. "You mind sharing?", she asks and while they are all just standing there, almost in size order, she can imagine them as schoolboys, shirts untucked and armed with glass marbles and magnifying glasses on the playground during recess.

"It's hard to explain, but it's an instinct. In our line of work, you come to rely on it. A lot. Who you can trust, who you can't. It almost never lets me down", Arthur explains, unhelpfully.

"O-kay…", she says, protracting the "o". "And what line of work are we talking about here? Professor Laraby mentioned you were in something like construction." Not normally her choice of an internship, but if it came from the professor, then there had to contain some element of challenge.

Cobb and Arthur share another look and then Arthur moves away. "He wasn't off the mark about that, although it's not the conventional construction most people are accustomed to. We don't build buildings – at least, not real ones."

"You build imaginary buildings?" She meant to be facetious but is taken aback by Cobb's nod.

"Amongst other things. We need someone to construct environments, interiors and exteriors. Here, drink this and we'll talk some more." Arthur, handing her a glass of clear liquid.

Ariadne brings it to her nose and sniffs. There is no odor, but it doesn't stop her from asking, "What is this?"

Cobb smiles faintly. "Water. It's a little too early for anything stronger, don't you think?" He also has a glass in his own hand. "You're starting to look a little peaked." He sips and she does the same. She guesses that was the last stretch of uninterrupted reality for her because the next thing she knows, things are exploding in slow motion around her, she's folding her adopted city into her own personal pretzel and experiencing the unique and not exactly pleasurable sensation of having a knife rammed through her lower abdomen.

Suddenly, she is awake. Arthur is directly in her line of vision, his hands hovering just above her shoulders. Before they can descend on her, though, she is out of the lawn chair (lawn chair?), her eyes swinging like a drunkard's fists. "What the hell was that?"

He's trying to corral her away from the big EXIT sign that her body automatically wants to run under. Then Cobb's up too from his equally questionably clean lounge chair and as they try to calm her down, she is suddenly aware of her petite stature in the presence of two male strangers. Maybe they see that on her face because they let her go, and they don't chase after her. She knows this, because she looks back at them when she makes it to the staircase. They remain standing in the same spot where she left them. They don't look flustered – in fact, they probably make that same facial expression if someone were to walk up to them and express displeasure at the spot of weather they were experiencing. Nonetheless, she can't seem to help looking over her shoulder when she's finally out of the warehouse and every fifteen minutes until she is back in her flat. Her hair is wet again.

It's three o'clock in the morning and she's tried everything – watching nature shows in French, listening to Yanni, and even staring at her digital clock. It's not as if her eyelids don't feel heavy (they could crush a man running underneath at this point), but each time she is about to drift off, she has a memory – no, a dream – of Mal Cobb stalking up to her and she jerks awake, her heart louder than the Kentucky Derby.

Her cell phone starts to ring. She grabs it and checks the caller ID – "Unknown". Given the bizarre spree of events in the last ten hours, her gut is telling her only two people would find it reasonable to ring her up in the middle of the night. Should she be frightened? Yes, but she's not. "Hello."

"It's Arthur." She hears him pause. "We met earlier today."

She barely manages to keep the bubble of sarcasm from escaping. "Yes, Arthur. I remember. What do you want?" She doesn't, however, bother suppressing her annoyance.

"You stormed out. I'm checking up on you." It's almost sweet, except that it's three o'clock in the morning and she never gave either of them her phone number.

"I'm fine. I'm trying to sleep."

He disposes of the small talk immediately. "Cobb seems certain you're going to find it difficult staying away."

"Cobb also has a crazy wife living inside his mind."

She hears Arthur cough, and then clear his throat. "Well, that's also why I'm calling. I don't think you realize the magnitude of what Cobb's offering you."

"What is it, exactly, that Cobb's offering me? What could possibly exist in there that would induce me to go back?" She sits up in bed, expectant.

She doesn't know it then, but later on, she'll know his response is, as Eames puts it in that melodious voice of his, simply Arthurian. "Pure creation." He is nothing if not succinct, efficient.

"I… I have to think about it." It's the best she can come up with, because her mind has already started to run away from her. It is leaping at those two words of his, bulldozing her rationale, even her fear, to make way for coliseums, playgrounds, acoustic halls, landscapes and multi-dimensional skyscrapers.

"Of course", he says, smoothly. She wonders if he looks like the Cheshire cat on the other end of the line. "Good night, Ariadne."

"Good night, Arthur." She is more than halfway through completing Ariadneville's thriving downtown area when the shrill sound of her morning alarm goes off and she doesn't feel a bit tired at all.

She has Professor Laraby's class the next day; it could just be her sleep deprived mind playing tricks on her but there seems to be a speculative light in his eyes when she enters the lecture hall. She chooses to sit towards the back and proceeds to pour the hot contents of her coffee thermos down her throat. It's the second night in a row that she has gone without sleep. The good news is that she is more than caught up with her school assignments. There's been no further late night outreaches from Arthur, but her sketchbook is now filled with fantastical ideas. Even now, while the professor is speaking, the pencil in her hand is doodling something which would be impossible to sustain in reality. In dreams, she could literally build a castle on a cloud. She blinks, sitting up straighter and wonders when she started delineating reality and unreality in such a concrete manner.

The doors in the back of the hall open and Arthur settles in beside her. Professor Laraby is facing the projector, marveling at the architectural wonder of Gaudi. Ariadne opens her mouth to shoot a sharp retort at him, but it is silenced by the placement of his hand on her forearm. It is warm and oddly enough, rough and callused. She would have expected soft hands from the likes of him.

"What are you doing here?", she hisses loud enough to earn looks of admonishment from neighboring classmates. Childish, yes, but she's tired and retaliates by baring her teeth at them.

He raises an eyebrow, and on the opposite side of his face, a corner of his mouth tilts up.

"I told you I needed to think on it!" She hates the dark circles under her eyes that she didn't bother to cover with concealer; she hates that she decided running a hand through the bird's nest on top of her head was sufficient; and she most definitely hates how one of his long fingers has landed on her top page of doodles and he is looking at it like a father admiring his child's finger paintings.

"Ariadne, did you hear me?", Professor Laraby calls out from the front of the room.

For some reason, this upsets her even further and she rises, ready to point an accusatory finger at Arthur. Everyone's suddenly tittering and the professor's face is strangely contorted in distaste. "What in God's name...", the professor says.

"Ah, Ariadne", Arthur finally says. He seems to be staring at some distant spot past her shoulder.

"What, Arthur? What do you want from me? And for God's sake, what are they staring at?"

He makes a motion with his hand, his eyes still averted. "It probably has something to do with the nakedness."

She looks down at herself and sees the flush of embarrassment traverse its way from below her chest to her face. Oh no. She begins to slap herself, hard, chanting, "I'm in a dream, wake up. I'm in a dream, wake up."

Her head flies up from the spot on the desk it was resting on. A ribbon of drool has trickled from her mouth and down an arm. She glances around her, bleary eyed – her classmates are mostly focused on the lecture, but she's now become a part of that errant population which uses class time as nap time. She rubs a palm into her eye. A naked dream, how trite.

After class, her hope of an unnoticed exit is quashed when the professor calls out in a not-to-be-trifled-with tone, "Ariadne, a moment, if you will." Her shoulders slump and she drops her head until her chin is almost to her chest before she stands up and jogs down the steps to meet him at his desk.

"Yes, Professor?", she assumes the most innocent tone she can muster up and makes her eyes extra round.

He looks at her, then away, then back again and sighs. "Allow me to feel a measure of guilt", he says. "You see, I knew what you would be getting into when I introduced you to my son-in-law. So when you show up for class in, shall we say, less than pristine condition, I can only deduce it's because of whatever Dom revealed to you earlier this week."

She's prepared to deny, make excuses, lie outright; instead, she crumbles under the genuine concern in his blue eyes. He's always reminded her of her own grandfather. "Professor, I'm... I'm not sure what to do. Building in dreams? The possibilities are endless. But to use it to manipulate a person's mind? It's risky and unethical."

He nods, his expression never wavering. "It is indeed all of that. This dream sharing business has caused more grief to Dom than can be mentioned. I would no more recommend anyone intentionally seeking it out as I would be in promoting recreational drug use."

On the one hand, she feels a degree of sanity and normalcy return - dream sharing, extraction, it's madness. Of course she should stay away from it. She should pretend the whole ordeal never happened. She would be grateful if she never had to imagine Mal again. But on the other hand, part of her wonders, with some irritation, why, if the professor was so emphatically against dream sharing that he would introduce her to Dom in the first place. To sic Cobb on her, seducing her with the unspoken promise of being a living god, without any warning. She wants to know why the professor would think that makes any sense.

But of course it doesn't. She focuses on his expression again. There's something more than a mixing of sorrow and guilt there. Her eyes narrow. "What's your angle in all this?"

He doesn't so much smile as his lips curve up in a grimace. "It doesn't take long for you, does it? You're my most clever pupil, Ariadne. In many ways, you're my true protege."

His compliments only serve to increase her anxiety. "Just say it, Professor", she says, tightly.

"I can't make the decision for you to join or not join Dom's scheme. But I'm asking you to consider taking on the risk. There's more at stake than money, fame or reputation." He pauses, and removes his glasses in the silence. She suddenly notices his resemblance to Mal. It's the shape of their eyes and the nose. "You see, I think you can save Dom."

"Save Dom? From what? He looks like he's more than capable of taking care of himself. He would do better if he spent more time looking out for others, in fact."

Professor Laraby is suddenly holding his wallet out and sliding a shiny piece of paper that is wedged underneath his driver's license. He hands it to her; she peers at it a long time before she speaks. "They look so happy. I didn't know they had children."

He points to each child and names them as he does. "Philippa. James. This was taken two years ago. That's the last time these children saw their father."

"Why does he stay away from them?"

"Because Dom is filled with regret. He will die with it by his side if someone doesn't shake him free."

The silence ticks by as she stares at the wallet sized photo. "You think I can do it? Professor, I'm not a psychology major."

"No, you are better than that - you are the version of him that he has always wanted to become but has failed to achieve. You are the future and enthusiasm and possible possibilities wrapped into one. You are him without his ever present shadow."

She keeps looking down at Mal, all glossy, innocent beauty. "Do I want to know what happened to her?", she asks, slowly.

She watches her mentor age ten years in under five minutes. The instinct within which Arthur relies so heavily on is loud like a church organ. Though she is merely a novice in the theories of dream sharing, she is certain that Cobb's projection of his wife is abnormally malevolent. There is a reason why Cobb would engage an inexperienced grad student in a deal which must surely be worth more than four years' worth of tuition. There is a reason why both he and his father-in-law would place so much responsibility on her shoulders. There is no one else. There is no Mal. She feels, rather than sees, Professor Laraby take the picture away. "No," he finally says. "No, you don't want to know what happened to her."

Maybe that's what does it for her. She stands, clenches her hands into fists. "Thank you, Miles. You've helped me tremendously. I will see you at our next class." She turns and leaves the man older and sadder than she ever remembers him.

She allows herself one night more. She shuts off her phone, takes a sleeping pill and tells herself she will not see Mal when she falls asleep. She doesn't. She dreams instead of swimming in a sea of grapes, wearing a gypsy costume.

In the morning she wakes up, feeling calm and clearheaded for the first time in 72 hours. She has no problem finding her way back to Cobb's and Arthur's headquarters. This time, she doesn't even make it more than a few feet past the gate before the door is swinging open and he is leaning against the frame. He looks much the same as the day they first met; and she's glad she no longer looks like a used mop. She breezes past him, but lets him lead the way back to the second floor. Neither of them make any attempt to say any words until they are back in the room.

"So, what made you come back?" He is truly baffled.

A million things run through her mind. She thinks about her safe, quiet and unassuming life. She thinks about the path which lies ahead of her; about hot fromage crepes during cold Parisian winters; about spending hours through the Louvre and holding her mother's hand the first time she saw the Mona Lisa. She thinks about building houses of cards on Sunday evenings with her grandfather and then progressing on to popsicle sticks and shoeboxes. She smiles up at Arthur and thinks about Miles, Philippa and James. "Pure creation", she responds, succinct and efficient.


	2. The Surreal Worlds

Still don't own any of the characters - except perhaps Vivianne, but let's admit it, she's Jan and everyone else is Marsha.

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**Chapter Two: The Surreal Worlds**

It doesn't seem possible that her life could get any weirder but it does. There are the instances where she is going to school, meeting with her fellow classmates to work on group assignments and writing her dissertation. When she isn't occupied doing these relatively mundane tasks, she is also reading about a multi-billionaire heir named Robert Fischer, in order to devise convincing enough environments to trick his mind and keep his projections as clueless as possible. The ultimate purpose being that they are successful in implanting in him the idea (and manipulating him into believing it was his own) to break up a business monopoly. She tells herself it's foolish to feel sorry for someone with the world at his beck and call, who has never had to clip coupons or want for any material possession. She looks at the 8X10" photos and finds him unconventionally handsome, although he could probably do with ten extra pounds on his frame.

There are her weekly phone calls back home, and her mother sending her monthly care packages of fresh socks and homemade cookies. Then there is Cobb taking off to North Africa, mumbling about meeting someone and Arthur asking if the "degenerate" is worth entering the heart of Cobol territory. "He's the best. We're not scrimping on quality this time around."

The expression on Arthur's face clearly disagrees with Cobb's statement. "Have you forgotten about Crete?"

Cobb gives him a look, like this is a familiar argument and he's tired of the circling. "That was years ago. Arthur, really. Will you just forget about it? We've worked with him willingly in lots of jobs since then and there hasn't been any repeat."

"If by willingly, you mean you say yes and I say no and you bring him on anyway?"

"Wait, what happened in Crete?", Ariadne interrupts. She's been around these two men several weeks now and she's insatiably curious to meet this third fellow who can push Arthur's buttons without even being physically present.

"Nothing happened in Crete", Cobb answers, staring evenly at Arthur the whole time.

He turns to go and if he hears the other man mutter under his breath, "Nothing involving a thousand year old Grecian urn and an urn maker's daughter", he decides to pretend he doesn't.

"If everything goes well, I'll be back in a few days." His manner of saying good bye is picking up the overnight bag on the floor and leaving.

She is continually surprised at Cobb's aplomb. "Do things usually go smoothly?"

Arthur shrugs. "He's landing himself in Cobol's lap, where they would happily place his severed head on a spike. Define 'smooth'." He catches himself, though, and pats her on the shoulder. "Dom's good at taking care of himself. He'll be back more or less when he says he will."

Arthur's words remind her of the personal conversation with Miles; it sends a jolt of guilt through Ariadne. She's supposed to be here for Cobb (_saving_ him) and instead, she has completely immersed herself in everything but.

Since joining the team, Cobb has taken on her two reconnaissance missions – the first one to Le Fil D'Or, so she could get a better feel of the kind of hotel Fischer would be accustomed to staying in. He books a hotel room and her eyebrows scramble up her forehead when she sees how much it costs for one night. In a double, never mind the penthouse. She admires the art hanging in the lobby, sniffs at the luxury bath products in the gleaming bathroom, and inconspicuously takes her shoes off to let her toes sink into the carpet. She observes the staff – men in starched shirts and women in knee-length skirts and sensible black shoes. He unlooses his own architectural background – she wonders, with a pang, if he used to debate the topic with Miles. Though it's clear his affinity is towards postmodernism (she can tell he could talk for hours about Michael Graves, Frank Gehry, and Robert A.M. Stern), he is well-versed in the neoclassicism which styles Le Fil D'Or.

On their second excursion, they fly to St. Moritz and spend a day there. He wants her to familiarize herself with the snow drift, but evades giving her a reason other than, "Just something that's percolating in my mind." She doesn't mind too much since he insists on renting ski mobiles and they spend a few hours zooming up and down a snowy mountainside. When her nose is about to chip off, he takes her to the nearest café for mugs of steaming coffee. She finds out that he talks shop pretty much all the time. And if he isn't talking about the job, then he's reading up on it as he carries the Fischer file everywhere he goes. She doesn't think she can get him to talk about Mal, so instead, she tries to draw on their common link – Miles. "How did Miles get involved in dream sharing?"

Cobb looks up from his phone – his fingers still typing on the keypad – he's probably emailing Arthur. "Miles worked for the British government for a number of years."

"Doing what?" She can't picture Miles in a dashing tuxedo sipping a martini.

"Consulting, mostly. He'd been originally brought on to design some government buildings and then returned to figure out the kinks when dream sharing went from theory to practice. He was a pioneer in the field."

She shakes her head. "Why did he ever stop?"

Cobb spares her an amused glance. "You've met him. Why do you think?"

She recalls Miles shuffling around campus, clutching _Walden_ in one hand, and occasionally reading selections in the middle of lectures. "I'm guessing it probably got too complicated. He's always struck me as a man of simple desires."

Cobb gets a look in his eyes; she knows he doesn't remember she's sitting in front of him anymore. She gives him his privacy, but wonders at the nightmare he is reliving. When he finally snaps to attention, she has turned her head away and is admiring the view of the slopes the cafe affords. The legs of his chair scrape back as he stands up. "Come on. We should get back to Paris."

Other than these excursions, she has seen him on the phone, tapping away at the laptop keyboard with two fingers, or reviewing Arthur's meticulous notes and strategizing. He has also disappeared for long stretches during the day - she can easily imagine that he is meeting with a sub society of people most are not aware exists. The one place she has most definitely not seen him in is her dream trainings. After that lovely introduction, Arthur has been the one to guide her through the ins and outs.

Arthur is the penultimate Renaissance man, knowledgeable in just about every subject she can think of. She's got a degree in Architecture and about to get another, but he ends up teaching her a few concepts she's never heard of. He's modest about it, though, crediting it to:"Schools usually don't want to promote the impossible - especially if it can only be achieved in a drug induced haze." They spend about five dream hours a day training but not consecutively. Mostly, he's guiding her on different scenarios they may typically encounter – she knows he hasn't studied this in a textbook. His thoroughness speaks of years of experience. The first few lessons are focused on forming as much of the dream environment as early as possible. "There's a few seconds when the target is still disoriented and that's the only time to correct major mistakes in design. Otherwise, the projections start to get suspicious and trigger happy."

She bristles. "Stick to my designs and there won't be any major mistakes."

He doesn't appear to be listening, however, as a marble fountain suddenly springs up next door in the museum they are wandering through. It's causing more than a few alarmed stares from her projections. "Is that cotton candy?", she asks, reaching out to touch the frothy pink stuff pouring out of spigot concealed as a dolphin's blowhole.

"You see, I meant to build one with water, but my mind ran away from me. In the last minute, without letting my conscious self be aware of it, it made a different choice. There's an incredible amount of control required to suppress your sub conscious. And even then it's a crap shoot."

He gently places a hand on her elbow and steers her towards a door marked "employees only". Once they pass under it, they are in what resembles the royal gardens of Versailles. Ariadne looks down at herself. "I'm wearing some ridiculous wig and sporting a fake mole on my face, aren't I?"

She giggles at Arthur's costume. He's wearing pantyhose and the heeled shoes that were fashionable for men in that era.

He pulls a mirror that has been tucked within his frilly, laced sleeve. Her eyes boggle at her own reflection. She wonders how many layers of white make up she has to dig through before she can see her own natural complexion. "You've got a walking cane." It sends her into a fit of hysterics.

Arthur offers an arm, which she takes, as she gasps against the corset that is strapped around her midsection. They walk through the garden and after a few turns, she is standing before a large maze made of shrubbery. They enter. It becomes very quiet a few yards beyond the entrance. "Now", he says. "Did you notice any last minute changes I made when we transitioned from the museum to the garden?"

She tries to recall, but can't. "I was too busy laughing at myself. And you."

"That's right. It's not a bad idea to incorporate a few trapdoors into each dream. It distracts the projections long enough to get out of a tricky situation." He rolls up a sleeve to reveal a faint white line on his forearm, almost perpendicular to the center of his wrist.

She peers at it. "Has that always been there?"

He shakes his head. "No. I don't have it in reality."

"What's it doing in your dreams, then?"

"To remind me of the last tricky situation I found myself in." She wonders if it even requires conscious focus anymore. "No trap door and Cobb's projection was particular to kitchen knives." His expression remains placid, but she is pretty certain that if he makes the effort to create that mark on his body every time he dreams, it was a profound experience.

They've wandered to the center of the maze, where there's another door propped up against one side of the shrubbery. When they go through, she's not surprised this time that they're back inside of the building they started in. They're also wearing normal clothing again. "You mean Mrs. Cobb, don't you? She gave you that scar."

His lips purse and he nods, slowly. It's a few minutes before he speaks up; his tone is carefully neutral. "The sensation of pain is a reaction of synapses between nerves, it's true. It's a message, written in code for the brain. The brain receives the message, translates it into terms we can understand and our body reacts accordingly. It's also conditioned to interpret pain if there are enough stimuli. For instance, no matter how much you tell yourself in a dream that a gun pointed at you isn't real, you still flinch when it's fired, right?" She nods. "It's the same with pain."

"That's why it hurts and you remember it." Something heavy settles into her gut. She knows the projections are harmless to her, but she edges closer to Arthur anyway. That's when her suspicions about Mal are confirmed. She feigns surprise when he tells her she's dead, but it's really to cover her fear. "What was she like?"

"She was lovely." The way Arthur says it causes her intense negativity towards Dream Mal to vanish.

When they wake up, she removes the needles from her wrist but remains in a resting position. Her hands lie atop one another on her stomach. She watches Arthur get up and collect the tubes back into the silver briefcase. He moves briskly and everything is neatly stored away within minutes. No doubt that's worked to his advantage on occasions when escape was needed from a still slumbering target. Goosebumps pebble her skin. Sure, there's jet skiing in the Swiss Alps and scoping out luxury hotels, but there's also death warrants and constant paranoia. The element of danger is astronomically present - maybe that's the only reality for those who choose this lifestyle.

"Is it about the money?"

Arthur looks up from the sheaf of papers on his desk - like Cobb, there isn't a waking moment when he isn't studying, memorizing, or planning. She's pretty sure if either men were in her shoes, they would have gotten her degree in six months. She wonders what he's like when he isn't working, if there is such a condition for him. How does he handle the buildup of anxiety? She pictures him playing polo, or tennis. Maybe he even has a wife or girlfriend waiting for him in some port city. Maybe he's like Cobb and has his own personal tragedy tied up in all this.

Arthur is not quite smiling but she can tell her question amuses him. She contains the urge to squirm under his all-too-assessing glance – how many young architects have come up to him with the same naïvete? "You're telling me you're going to refuse your share?"

She shuffles her feet as the blood rises to her cheeks. She hasn't met their benefactor, but after she signed on, Cobb told her the payout – she had just managed to lift her jaw off the floor only to drop it again when he clarified that amount was per person. That night, she went home and wrote first that number, then the total, on a piece of paper. The zeroes that trailed competed with the length of her apartment. "Ah, no", she mumbles, ducking her head down. "I'm not going turn away the money."

"Hey." He reaches out and tucks a finger underneath her chin until her eyes meet his. "You're going to meet a lot of people – not just in this business – whose philosophies are going to be very different than yours. You might agree with them, you might not. But at the end of the day, it's about the job and nothing else. Focus on what you're bringing to the table – let everything else fall by the wayside."

Up until that point, she thought it was just curiosity but now she knows better – she wants to believe that maybe he had a higher purpose, too. He breaks contact from her, his fingertip lightly trailing the underside of her chin until it reaches the apex and careens off into space. He brushes the pad of that finger against another and then slips the entire hand into a pocket. She steps back, blinking, and nods. "Good point. I'll remember that." Why is her voice raspy? She reaches for a bottle of water and then nearly chokes when she checks the time. "Good Lord, I've got to go!" She's down the stairs, out the door and on her bicycle heading back to the University before she realizes he never directly answered the question. He's good with deflection – and a part of her is relieved. He'll tell her, if she presses enough – she can be quite persistent when she sets her mind to it; but she wants to be the proverbial ostrich – she knows she won't ask him again. She pedals harder, pushing herself, and hopes that the unease that's pooling inside of her will have dissipated by the time she's on campus.

Later that night, her classmates convince her that they all deserve a night of revelry, and, are taken aback when, at the bar, she pours two shots of bourbon down her throat like it's water. On her third shot, she notices that the hand that is bringing the glass to her lips is shaking and spilling the amber colored liquid. Her friend, Vivianne gives her a concerned look. "What is the cause of all this? This is not your normal behavior." The two of them have volleyed the number 1 ranking between each other since their first year. She doesn't know how Miles made the decision to select her instead of Vivianne for dream sharing. Part of her is aware that the liquor is now talking – but maybe Vivianne, with her full, pink lips, strawberry blond hair, and lilting voice, is too distracting. It reminds her of Arthur's lecture about focusing on the job and only the job. It makes her feel weirdly depressed.

"What is normal? What is real? What if everything we think _is_ is just a… a hoax? A parlor trick? A figment of someone else's imagination?" Lately this has been dwelling inside of her, gaining momentum, a half-formed idea, but it hasn't been verbalized until right this very moment. She stares at her own hands, and pinches them. It hurts but it doesn't reassure her at all.

Vivianne's brows draw together and she places a cool hand on Ariadne's forehead. "Why would we be a figment? We exist. We are who we are and where we are."

She shakes her head vehemently. "But what if we weren't who we are and where we are? What if we're just who we are based loosely on someone's impression of someone else?" She grips Vivianne's arm. "What if we're just a projection?"

Benoit squeezes himself in between the two of them and overhears her. He makes a sign, the universal hand gesture for smoking things not legal, and starts to laugh. He claps her shoulder, which sends her lurching onto the mantel. "Ne la donnez plus à la boisson! L'eau seulement!", he says to the bartender, pointing a large hand at her.

Her forehead wrinkles and even though gravity doesn't seem to be functioning the way it should, she manages to maintain her balance in spite of the rocking. The bartender is grinning at her so she insists, "Pas, non, je suis très bien." She breaks into a wide smile at the sound of her own voice. "Mon Français semble bon!"

Vivianne pulls her away from the bar. She closes her eyes, and the darkness behind them makes her dizzy. The next thing she knows, she is in the back alleyway, vomiting into a large trash compactor. She feels terrible and finally straightens, intending to ask her friend to call her a cab home. But Vivianne isn't there. It's Arthur standing in the alleyway next to her. "Where's Vivianne? Did I pass out?" Her head is aching but she's already glancing around, trying to discern cracks in the design.

"Your friend is back inside. I told her I was going to look after you." He has taken off his blazer and is holding it out for her. "Come on, put on my jacket and I'll take you home."

She backs away from him. "No, that doesn't make sense. Vivianne doesn't even know I know you. Why would she leave me with a stranger?"

"Ariadne", Arthur says, enunciating the syllables of her name. "You're not dreaming, you're just drunk. Vivianne is inside – through that door. You started getting sick before you could reach the bathroom, so I brought you out here." He pauses as her eyes dart from him to the door just past him. "Now, now, if you just come over here to me, I can put my jacket on you and we can go back inside, where Vivianne can corroborate everything I've just said."

She moves one inch closer to him, his jaw ticks but he doesn't step forward. She juts her chin at his arm. "Roll up your sleeves." He nods and slowly unbuttons his cuffs and pushes up the sleeve of one arm, then the other. Both are smooth and scar-free. Her shoulders slump. He moves to her and she feels the fabric of his jacket settle with a comforting warmth. Instantly, she is surrounded by the scent of his aftershave – a pleasing combination of something citrusy and baby powder. Arthur's arm is around her and guiding her back inside. As predicted, Vivianne is standing a few feet away and rushes over when she spots them.

"Ariadne, how are you feeling? You fainted before, I was so frightened!" She glances at Arthur and in a lower tone of voice, whispers, "Do you know him? You called him Arthur when you saw him."

She closes her eyes and now wishes that this really were a dream. She opens them again and looks at the other woman. "Yes, I really do know him. We're… friends." She shoots him an apologetic glance – she has to call him something and co-conspirator seems even more inappropriate.

"Oh", says Vivianne and she holds out her hand, not flirtatiously, to Arthur. "Enchantee."

After he takes it and responds in kind, she focuses back on Ariadne, who just wants to die. "I'll call us a cab. You should stay with me tonight."

Arthur steps in between the two of them. "The night is still young. I was on my way home, why don't you remain with your friends and I'll take care of Ariadne?", he suggests.

Vivianne hesitates, but she nods when she sees Ariadne is already taking his arm. She hugs her and then heads back to where there friends are sitting, no doubt dropping commentary on Ariadne and Arthur. Meanwhile, Arthur gently leads her out the front entrance, successfully managing to keep her upright and hailing a cab that actually stops for them at the same time. She tumbles inside the backseat, landing with an "Oomf!" He climbs in beside her with considerable more grace. The car starts moving. Her head, which is resting on his shoulder, lolls away and up. She says in a sleepy voice, "Hey, I don't live at that address."

"No, but I do."

"Well, I don't want to go to your place. I want to go home."

"We're going back to my apartment first; if you feel better, I'll take you back to yours. How's that sound?"

She looks at him through heavy lidded eyes. "The logic is sound", she admits. He makes a funny hitching sound in the back of his throat. "I think that's the first time I've heard you laugh. It sounds like you're trying swallow an ostrich egg whole."

"Thanks."

A few moments pass in silence. "Vivianne? That pretty girl we left behind at the bar? She's probably just as good as me in designing environments."

"Hm."

"I'm just saying. You know, in case you and Cobb decide I'm... unsuitable."

Arthur shifts to peer down at her. "Why would you be unsuitable?"

"You obviously didn't witness my freakout at the bar. Wait. Were you following me?"

"Your phone has GPS on it. Your medical records show that your liver is phenomenally unsuitable towards processing alcohol."

She smiles up at him. "You were worried about me, you creepy stalker."

"The plan can't work without an architect."

"Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. You can always approach Vivianne."

Arthur shakes his head. "No."

"You should know I'm not the kind of person who gives out meaningless praise. Vivianne is good."

"Nonetheless, she can't do what you do."

"Is this about your instinct again?"

He doesn't answer her, just raises an eyebrow. The cab comes to a stop. "Brace yourself, we're here. And if you're going to throw up again, try not to get any on my suit. It's handmade." She sends a train wreck of swear words (in English and French) at his head, causing his doorman's ears to turn red while Arthur laughs the entire way up to his apartment.


	3. Suite Dreams are Made of These

Thanks Christopher Nolan for planting these characters inside my mind. While they're taking up mental space, I'm going to put them to work.

* * *

**Chapter Three: Suite Dreams are Made of These**

Ariadne wakes up several times throughout the night and following morning, but can finally keep her eyes open for longer 30 seconds around 11 AM. She is buried under a goose-feather comforter and wearing a t-shirt that goes down to the middle of her thighs. She wishes she was the kind of drunk who doesn't remember every single, humiliating detail. But she's not. She remembers Arthur leading her into his bathroom and leaving her to dry-heave into his toilet; him coaxing her to drink some water and take an aspirin, and, him having to help her fumble out of her clothes. Glancing around the bedroom to double check that she is alone and that the door is closed, Ariadne climbs out of bed and both her head and stomach protest, loudly. She takes a moment to draw in a few deep breaths before she is able to stand up. Her clothes are neatly folded and placed on top of a bureau. They smell wonderful, like lemon or orange zest. He must have found time to wash it in the morning.

She steps out of the bedroom, wondering if he is already at the warehouse. His apartment reminds her of his dreams - sleek, modern, expensive. She swears her feet are moaning in ecstasy as they tangle up in the plush jungle of carpet. It's better than Le Fil D'Or. Straight ahead of her is the hallway and at the end of that is a living room with a breathtaking view of Paris on her left, and, the kitchen to her right. She sees he is standing over the stove, his back facing her, and he is flipping the stem of a metal spatula around and around in his hand. Apron strings are tied loosely around his vested waist. She pads silently to the living room window, which takes up an entire wall. The blinds are drawn back so the sun streams in and casts a golden glow throughout the flat. The Eiffel Tower gleams in the distance. "Are we in Montmartre?"

He doesn't sound surprised when she speaks up. His auditory sense probably rivals those of a bat's. "Yes. I made you French toast; I figured you would be hungry." He turns around and her lips twitch as he reveals the full front side of the apron.

She sits down at the kitchen island (white marble), and settles onto a stool which is backed and cushioned. She is ravenous and doesn't bother with the knife and fork he places on either side of the table mat. She takes a large bite and closes her eyes. "It's delicious", she says, already reaching for a second triangle with a free hand.

He tips his head. "Probably the only thing I know how to make. How are you feeling?"

"Like I put my stomach and liver though a wood chipper, set them on fire and then tried to piece everything back together with Scotch tape. Otherwise, I'm peachy." She glances around. "Where did you sleep? You did sleep, didn't you?" Dear Lord, when did she become her mother?

"I rested some; the couch pulls out." He picks up a teakettle, and pours steaming water into a mug with a teabag in it. A minty, soothing odor issues forth seconds later. "Drink this. It'll settle your stomach."

She sips it; combined with the French toast, her stomach eventually stops its undulating spikes and retreats into a corner. "Thanks, ah, for everything. I guess I should figure out a totem for myself soon." On top of everything else there is to do - she could have, should have, started working on one sooner, but it was her foolish ego which presumed she wouldn't need a totem. "Are you going to mention this incident to Cobb when he gets back?"

"Mention what? You got drunk. It happens, on occasion."

She crams the last piece of toast into her mouth and sweeps the crumbs on the surface into her hand. "Not for me. This is going to be a strong reminder why I shouldn't even try." She gets up and deposits the crumbs into a trash receptacle. "Do you own this place or are you renting it on a short term basis?"

"I own it." He places her empty dish in the sink, unties the apron (which he places on a hook near the stove) and then slips into a jacket that is hanging on another stool. His phone rings; he flips it open and answers. "Yeah. She's here. I see. Ok. We're fifteen minutes away." He ends the call and reaches for her coat on the coat rack.

"Cobb?"

"Yes. And he's brought back company. Come on, we'll take my car."

When she walks into the warehouse, behind Arthur, she draws up short. There's curly-haired, pudgy Yusuf, immersed in a glass fortress of flasks, beakers, and distillation kits. He is wearing safety goggles and slowly pouring a graduated cylinder filled with cherry red liquid into a florence with clear liquid and white smoke trailing out of it. He stops and gives her a smile before resuming his attention to the task at hand. Cobb is standing nearest to them, with Saito, who alternates conversing quietly with him or conducting business over the phone. When they are introduced, he greets her by way of a bow, starting from the waist with his legs together. He makes it look effortless, a simple physical gesture, but when it's her turn, she's like a felled tree flailing towards the ground. Clearly, he is the person supplying the money in this operation. He exudes such subdued power, sans any hint of ego, it leaves her dry-mouthed.

Then there's Eames, whose eyes light up - she practically sees horns emerging from his head - when he notices her. He ignores Arthur's extended hand and pushes past him to circle Ariadne. "Eames, and I'm at your absolute disposal, whenever you want me. What's your name, love?"

She tells him, and holds out her hand for a shake. Instead, he grasps its and she feels his stubbled jaw and soft lips graze over her knuckles. "How delectable and lovely your skin is. Are you our fresh and dewy architect?"

"Yes", Arthur says from behind them. "Hello to you, too."

Eames turns slightly to him, just enough to acknowledge his words, but doesn't let go of Ariadne's hand or break his stare into her eyes. "Fascinating", he murmurs before finally releasing her. "I've a feeling we're going to get along quite well together."

Later on, she will ask Eames why he insists on provoking Arthur. He will respond, "Can't you see the big, red button on his forehead with the words 'Push me' written across it? Oh, you want an actual reason? Well I suppose it's akin to that story about the biblical family." She will walk away at that point, only to have him drag her back. "I'm being serious here, I am! He's the one who stays behind to work the farm and tends to the ailing, alcoholic mum; and, I'm the urbane, scamp of a prodigal son who comes home to a fattened calf and shags the town's highly coveted, former prom queen."

"Is Cobb the ailing, alcoholic 'mum' in your loose reinterpretation of the parable?"

He will give her a look. "Dom is bloody brilliant at his job - Lord knows we've raked in obscene amounts of money working together - but let's you and me be honest with each other here. He's a tendency to not keep his hands on the steering wheel - especially when making sharp turns on cliffs. It's almost admirable, really, that our little prince doesn't have any white hair to show for the effort it takes to keep Cobb on track." It's the closest he will ever come to directly complimenting Arthur.

He will gleefully stroll away before she shouts, face red, "I better not be the prom queen in your scenario!"

Their plan starts to move forward from theory to action. Arthur still seems skeptical on inception, but Cobb and Eames do not share that sentiment. They debate back and forth the best approach to encountering Robert Fischer by reviewing his schedule (an easy enough task, what with Saito's wallet being a self-generating bottomless pit.) Fischer doesn't fit the stereotypical young, child-of-a-billionaire profile - he is hardworking, well-versed in his family's business, and while introverted, not afraid to express his opinions, especially when he thinks he is right. He attends a minimum number of social events, really just charitable dinners for causes of which he is a strong proponent (such as research to find a cure for prostate cancer, from which his father is dying of.) Arthur can't find any real vices on the man - the most offensive being a handful of one-night stands in his early 20s, which ends abruptly after he begins courting his fellow heiress-billionaire and recent fiancee. They decide their best bet to catch him is on his bimonthly flights from Australia to Los Angeles, which gives them enough time to go three levels into his subconscious. Ariadne can't fathom it, as she's never even had a dream within a dream, much less drilling down one further layer.

Ultimately, the team (minus one architect) will regroup in Sydney, but Eames will head over first in order to study Browning. For Ariadne, it means she has to finish conceptualizing, actualizing and training Eames on his dream environment before he leaves. Time moves paradoxically - unfurled when she's asleep and then much too compressed when she's awake. She finally goes back to her apartment with the intent to actually spend the remainder of a night there, but then she feels like she's intruding on a stranger's home that just happens to have all of her things lying about. She ends up packing a duffel bag, grabbing the textbooks she needs for school and heading back to the warehouse. Cobb, Eames and Yusuf are almost always there, with the latter two men claiming empty offices on the second floor to sleep in.

Everyone trains, especially her and Saito. She doesn't understand why she has to, but Arthur insists. He leads them through countless dream hours of projection defense and combat. She is shaken the first time she has to disarm, hit, stab, maim, kill a projection; she'd probably feel worse but doesn't because Saito throws up the first time he spills blood. That night, as Ariadne wraps up her work and is trying to convince herself to move on to a school project, she sees Saito come in and set up a chess set at the long conference table in the far corner. He beckons to her and she obliges, curious. It's way past his normal hours in the warehouse. "Do you play?", he asks as she takes a seat facing him.

"A little - when I was a little girl, my mother taught me but I didn't have the patience for it."

"Please, indulge an old man, if you will."

She smiles at his referring to himself as old. If he lived to see one hundred years, he would never be old. She tries to recall the rules of the game as she nudges a pawn forward. They parry over the board for the next few moves. Each piece is finely detailed - precise curves and distinct features. "This is a beautiful set", she says.

He moves his rook out. "Yes, when I heard the news that my wife was expecting, I commissioned this chess set to be made. It was always my wish to share it with my son."

"I'll bet he enjoyed it." She brushes the tip of her finger over the smooth spiral top of the bishop before she captures one of his pawns.

There is a pause. "There were complications during his childhood. We did not have the opportunity, unfortunately." His hand wavers above his own bishop, not touching it, and then he veers to his knight, moving it forward.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Saito. I really am."

They play on in silence for awhile after that. When it is down to her queen protecting the king, he says, "You move your queen aggressively."

She laughs. "I hate losing. Even at a game I don't excel in." He shares her mirth, while taking her queen at the same time. After that happens, she knocks her king down. "That didn't take long at all, did it?"

"I have found it very enjoyable. Would you be willing to play again?" She finds that she is up for another game and they reassemble the pieces on the board. When it is approaching dawn, they decide to get some rest, but before he leaves, he insists on giving her the chess set as a gift.

"But it's yours and your son's!", she protests.

"And now it is yours." His tone brooks no argument. He slides the board and stacked pieces towards her. She stands up and bows deeply to him. He returns the bow before leaving.

The next night, she takes the queen and drills a hole through one side of the base. It tips over with a thunk that resonates inside of her. She hears a sound in the next room, and, it's the first time in awhile that she and Cobb have a moment alone. Maybe because it's late or because she knows he's had the least amount of sleep out of everybody or because she's caught him unawares, but he is the first to bring up Mal. In her mind's eye, a suspended bridge materializes between them, delicate and not reinforced to brace against strong currents. She slowly crosses the chasm, but stops and grips the edge when the wind picks up. He is blunter than Arthur in deploying evasive action; there are no smooth transitions when he directs them back to shop talk. But she's persistent and she changes tactics by appealing to the other bond they have - architecture - and witnesses his anxiety about knowing the design layouts. She continues to move, advancing closer to him. Even though Miles warns her, and up until then, she has been happy to take his advice and remain in ignorance, Ariadne knows that she has to know what happened to Mal. It is pivotal. She knows she'll cross that bridge and then will still have to climb a mountain or wrestle with a jungle cat or some other obstacle to understand Cobb. When he confesses to her, the words leave his mouth and volleys in the air, she freezes as they hurtle towards her. She wishes she could be triumphant about successfully lifting one more layer from him. "They think I killed her."

She blinks, once, twice. He's looking at her, calm, patient, braced, tensed. His family photo flashes across her brain. _"They look so happy. I didn't know they had children." _Her own words. She lifts her eyes up to him and says the only thing that is on her mind. "How did she die?"

Some strong emotion runs across his face; it is gone before her mind has finished scouring through its Rolodex of recognized expressions. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens it again. "Thank you."

Does his out-of-place gratitude preface Mal's story? Her head tilts as if it can physically roll the idea from one side of her brain to the other. "For what?"

From the corner of her eyes, she sees he is fiddling with his totem as he says, "Not asking whether I did." A door opens and Saito is there, looking for him. The bridge vanishes; Cobb breaks contact with her eyes but his hand shoots out, when he is almost out of range, forcing his arm to stretch a little and he squeezes her shoulder before leaving the room to attend to Saito.

Arthur finds her much later, still in the workroom. "What are you doing here by yourself?"

She wants to tell him, she does. But she can't forget about the relief in Cobb's eyes and she swallows, pushing his guilt and her fear down inside of her. She forces a smile. "Just finishing up on a few things."

His eyes sweep her cleared workstation, the books and papers and mazes all sorted into piles or stacked away neatly, the laptop powered off. "Eames and Yusuf brought back food and have set all of it up in the dining hall. Let's go."

She nods, and gets up. As she passes by him, she stops and turns to face him. "Do me a favor? Roll up your sleeves again?"

He doesn't comment about her request but then again he's not remarking about her mood, either. He acquiesces. "Haven't figured a totem yet?"

She doesn't respond because she is watching the precise manner in which he uncuffs and folds away at the fabric, causing each band to stack on top of the previous ones. He is bared from wrist to elbow and places them adjacent to each other, his fingers curled into relaxed fists, and tilts it towards her. Her hands are in her jacket pocket and one of them grips the chess piece that occupies the space as well. She examines what he is offering, first one smooth expanse of skin, then the other. She nods and straightens. "Thank you, Arthur."

"You're welcome, Ariadne." He sticks his hands into his pockets and juts out one arm at her, tilting slightly on the opposite foot to maintain balance. "Eames has probably polished off all the crepes by now." She places a hand lightly in the crook of his arm and they follow their senses downstairs, to the sweet and savory smells, to the sounds of laughter and companionship snapping like whips in the evening air.


	4. Requiem for Collective Oneironauts

I want to say I own these characters. But I would be lying. And rich. Very, very rich.

* * *

**Chapter Four: Requiem for Collective Oneironauts**

_When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality._

- Dom Helder Camara

Ariadne finishes designing the hotel. As with Eames, she gives Arthur the blueprints and 3D model and then they go under the first time with she being the dreamer constructing the environment. The next time she will be the subject. He, of course, has memorized the layout already and strides around with purpose. His first walk around is to check all the different exit points - where each set of elevators are (for guests and staff), the staircases, and side passages leading to the backdoors and underground garage. Because they don't exactly know which part of the hotel will be utilized, he indicates trap doors in various locations. "These elevators will open up to a concert hall – something like Carnegie Hall."

"Are we facing the stage?"

"No, the audience. We'll be on stage. Hopefully with a mess of performers to obfuscate."

"Better make it more like Madison Square Garden, then."

He slides a look at her. "Backstreet Boys? Menudo?"

She makes a face. "The Killers. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers."

They walk into the bar. He admires the slanted windows. "Someone likes the Egyptian Wing at The Met."

"I practically lived there. Always wanted to build windows like that."

They wait until his projections are focused on something else before slipping into the kitchen. Past the kitchen, down a plain white hall, they take a service elevator up to the rooftop. In front of them is a shut gate that leads outside. He puts his hand on the handle but does not turn. "Locked?"

"Um, hold on." She concentrates and when they look at the gate again, there is no longer any keyhole. The handle depresses easily enough.

He steps out onto a field of flowers – lavender, holly, honeysuckle, and black-eyed Susans. A light breeze drifts by, causing blossoms to ripple in gentle waves. The green stretches all the way to the edge of the roof. Interspersed amidst the field grass are shiny black panels angled up at the sky. There are thin trail ways crisscrossing to avoid trampling the lawn. He squints up – there's not a cloud anywhere. "Let me guess – you are writing your thesis on sustainable architecture."

"Green roofs reduce the consumption of heat in the winter and cool in the summer. It can serve as a natural habitat for all types of wild animals. It makes financial as well environmental sense."

"I see, Professor. But I was hoping there would be a helicopter pad here in case we needed-" his head snaps up as the song swells around them.

Her nose wrinkles. "Interesting choice in musical selection, Arthur." It's country. Worse, it's bad country. She doesn't peg him as the type who listens to Billy Ray Cyrus.

Neither does he. "We still have time", is all he says.

"What?" She convinces herself that dancing along will make the song end sooner. She snaps her fingers, trying to find the beat and is reminded why her mother pulled her out of ballet class after only two weeks in.

"We're still under the effects of the somnacin. God knows what playlist he's compiled for us." His effort to remain calm is showing – his face is a brilliant shade of purple. She could make a lasagna from it.

Thankfully, she awakens after only three songs - but she knows they will be looping in her brain for the remainder of the day. She sits up, silences the iPod before it can assault anyone else's ears and turns to Arthur's chair. It's already empty, the tubing dangling over the armrest. She hears the door click shut and gets up to hurry after him.

"- exactly the kind of unprofessional behavior that's going to screw up the job." He's not yelling, but she knows he's upset. She bursts in to see Arthur standing over Eames who is sitting down, leaning back and looking completely unfazed.

"I've no idea what you're talking about, my dear boy. Why don't you wag your finger at Yusuf, not me – I haven't even been near the work room while you've been under." Eames' gaze flickers past Arthur to Ariadne but he doesn't twitch a muscle when she rolls her eyes.

"I find that hard to believe." If it were her, she would have already lost her cool and would be hurtling obscenities and hard matter at Eames by now.

The forger widens his eyes until they can hold tea and he places a hand on his own chest. "You wound my heart. My. Achy. Breaky. Heart." To his credit, he manages to say this with a straight face.

She is mortified when a giggle escapes out of her.

Arthur's jaw clenches but he chooses not to prolong the fight. He leaves without looking at anyone and closes the door quietly behind him. Ariadne makes to follow, but Eames stops her – "Don't bother, love. Let him work it out of his system on his own."

Yusuf comes in a few minutes later. "What's got into Arthur's knickers?"

She places her hands on her hips as she faces him. "Confess, Yusuf. How much did this clown here give you to switch the song?"

He breaks into a wide grin. "Fifty euros. But I would have done it for free had I known it would be this much fun. Did you see him?" His impression of Arthur is startlingly accurate.

She looks at both of them, and channels Mrs. Kantrowitz, her third grade school teacher. "Is this because of that remark he made earlier? About your idea? Really, you're both grown men. Very mature."

Eames shrugs, palms up in the air. "What can I say? I'm young at heart."

"His young, achy, breaky heart", Yusuf chimes. She shakes her head, but they see that she's failing at maintaining her stern expression. Eames is a good sport, and he submits to being woken with songs of Ariadne's choosing each time he goes under before flying off to Sydney a few days later.

After she finishes showing Yusuf the schematics for the first layer, there really isn't much more for her to do except make minor adjustments and oversee the PASIV while everyone else dreams. Meanwhile, it becomes busier, if possible, for the rest of the team. They are running constant drills at this point. She watches their sleeping faces and she knows that right here, right now, it's just a test. It's unreal unreality. But she can't help feeling anxiety about what might happen over there – it is a convoluted system of Domino tiles – much too much hinges on what happens before for what will happen next. And that's even before they enter the first layer. Her heart lurches whenever one of them jerks, or grimaces, or mumbles incoherently in what might be a distressed tone. Cobb joins the drills once in awhile, only when it is necessary. During those times, she fixates on him, ears pricked, waiting in dreadful expectation of Mal's appearance. But she doesn't show - his subconscious seems to have a knack for making inopportune, unwelcome entrances.

She has Cobb to thank for the idea of stealing into his dreams - after she surprised him the last time, he gets Yusuf to watch over him and she realizes that what he's "testing" has something to do with what they've talked about. It's clear he's not eager to reopen that line of discussion. She's not normally so intrusive but she was hoping to have made more progress at this point and she'd rather not spend the rest of her time at university avoiding looking Miles in the eye. It's easy these days when she runs out of his class without so much as a goodbye – everything has fallen to a distant second behind the Fischer job. She doesn't even have much time for socializing, outside the odd hours when the crew lets off steam but those have decreased substantially with the resident prankster already in Australia. Vivianne has reached out to her at least twice but Ariadne has been able to speak with her only briefly and in the vaguest of terms. She feels bad, and resolves to treat her friend out to a nice meal when the team has launched out of France. Towards this inevitable event she has ambiguous feelings. It's almost guaranteed she will never cross paths with these gentlemen again, which is a pity, because she has come to regard them as people she wants in her life. Soon enough, though, they will become no more than a memory - and then further disintegrate into figments of her imagination, tattered remnants of half remembered dreams.

"Arthur." He looks up from his laptop. "I need to ask you for another favor. No, not that", she says hastily when he starts to unroll his sleeve. "Can you keep Yusuf distracted for a few minutes in here?"

The skin between his eyebrows crinkles. "I can do that. What's this about?"

"You trust me, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Good. Because I trust you, too. And I would tell you, if it were mine to tell."

He straightens in his chair. "What you need to do - will it impact the job?"

How predictably Arthur, a British-sounding voice inside of her remarks. She levels a steady stare at him. "I think you're already prepared regardless if I answer yes or no to that, and, you know if I don't do this, it will definitely impact the job."

His mouth flattens and he jerks his head. "Right. Go." She scoots out into the hallway and ducks behind a corner. "Yusuf. Yusuf!"

"Hang on, mate - I heard you!", the man calls back. She hears his footsteps get louder then recede as he enters Arthur's room. When the door clicks shut, she emerges from her hiding place and speed walks to Cobb's prone body. Before her mind can generate a list of all the very bad things she could and probably will encounter inside his head, she seats herself and jabs her wrist with needles.

She's never been one for scary movies; so when she finds herself in a creaky elevator which slowly scrapes up and down Cobb's mind, she breaks into terror sweats. Nonetheless, she makes herself move forward. She sees them, sharing a moment, almost reminding her of that photo except everything in his dream is filtered through a melancholy light. It's the first time in weeks that Ariadne has seen Mal; is she the lovely version? She shifts forward to take a better look, to hear this Mal, and her sneaker places its weight between two wooden planks with a puff of space underneath. The floor boards give out the tiniest of squeaks - but Mal's ear pricks and she has spotted her and is giving her a look that Ariadne has yet to forget from their previous encounter. Cobb is up and rushing both of them back into the elevator car, and he looks _furious_. He gets in, slams the grate closed and after pressing a button, they begin to climb upward. While she is engaged in a heated conversation with him, she also notes each floor they pass seems to contain different places, different periods of times. They get out at the top where the salty air leaves a sticky residue on her skin. When she sees Mal up here too, her skin crawls as it becomes obvious Ariadne has willingly entered into her own worst nightmare. "But these aren't just dreams, are they? They're memories." He doesn't deny it. He tells her he's using them to change things, to make regret obsolete. He doesn't tell her it's an exercise in failure.

She thinks about their first lesson together. The subconscious fills the dream – build a hope chest and it will be filled with happy memories - the day someone got married or bought their first car, for instance. Build a fortress and find a person's most treasured commodities - a child, a place, perhaps even a memory. Build a basement and in there, a person will hide the things that aren't supposed to see the light of day.

He takes her to his house - his and Mal's. It's constructed from wood, filled with light and haunted by memories of better days. "There's only one thing about me you need to know." In his delirium, he strides out first, leaving it up to her to close - or rather, not close - the elevator door. She cautiously follows him, and at the right moment, when he's submersed himself in the old wounds again, she sprints back to the lift. What does Cobb have buried down in the basement? His legs are much longer than hers and she's always been terrible at track - she can feel phantom hands grabbing the back of her shirt, which causes her to pump her legs even harder. Suddenly, she's in and pressing the button on the panel before she can even process anything. She's sinking slowly, and catches one long, glimpse of him before disappearing from his line of sight - his eyes are stricken. Her stomach clenches.

The elevator lands with a jerk. On this bottom floor, it is evening. The breeze from the window is cold, stark. Ariadne hears and feels the crack of a sharp and brittle object on the floor. She looks down and sees a champagne flute lying in pieces underneath her foot. From her peripheral vision, a figure that is draped in something shiny and silky rises in the corner. "What are you doing here?"

"My name is-", she backs up, her eyes flitting back and forth from Mal's face to her hands.

"I know who you are." At this point, her sense of obligation towards Miles or Cobb is crouched behind her, using her body as a shield. Ariadne wants to tell her she's not here to harm her, but she can't. It would be disingenuous and Mal already knows, can probably smell the truth emanating from her pores. She's here to find answers. She's here to seek the truth, to dredge up deep shames and grief and doubt. She's here to eradicate a problem and that problem is standing in front of her wearing a slip and a dangerous expression while holding a second jagged flute of champagne.

It's not real, but it feels real and the pain will too, doubly more so. Mal is coiling and then uncoiling, ready to strike when Cobb flashes in between the two of them. He is placating her, pleading with her, speaking to her in a tone that she's never heard out of him._ "Do you know what it is to be a lover? One half of a whole?"_ The words reverberate over and over again, drowning out Cobb's, numbing Ariadne. She is only moving because Cobb is pushing her, and they are steadily retreating as he continues to cajole his dream wife. As soon as there is a metal barrier, Mal flings herself at them. She is nothing but owlet eyes framed by dark tresses that follow them – no, that follows _her_ – as they ascend away.

Ariadne waits for her heart to slow down when her eyes finally open. They are back in the warehouse. She stares down at Cobb, still under, and considers the idea of wrapping her hands around his throat and squeezing. _"Do you know what it is to be a lover? One half of a whole?" _ No, she doesn't know and if that's what it takes, she doesn't ever want to know.

He is blind to the correlation. She breaks free, stronger and angrier every time. "You think you can build a prison of memories to lock her in? You think that's going to contain her?" He's making it worse. She doesn't think, after waking from a nightmare, that she would, immediately, want to plunge back into it. That _that_ would be the better alternative.

Saito comes in, with bad news. She sees Arthur just outside the door, in the hallway, looking at the three of them inside. Maurice Fischer is dead and she's out of time. She's not going to convince him, she's not going to be able to save him. They go from having a few more weeks to less than a handful of days.

"We have to move", Cobb says.

A million things run through her mind. She thinks about university and getting an internship - a legitimate one - and graduating. She thinks about forty-hour workweeks, living in an apartment that can actually fit more than her bed, and the thrill of designing her first building. She thinks about buying her first house, gutting and renovating it to her exact specifications; then, filling it with a family of her own. All of these things pull at her and she wants to reach for them, but that means she has to let go of what's in front of her now, and watch them fly away. As much as she knows that once she has these future things, these future dreams, that it will feel right (so much so that she will look back and wonder at the hesitation) it is, at the moment, an impossible possibility.

She pivots. "I'm coming with you." It's a decision she makes as she is saying the words.

"No, I promised Miles."

She wants to laugh and tell Cobb that Miles possesses the uncanny ability to extract promises from everybody. And that her promise to Miles is more important than his. "The team needs someone in there who understands what you're struggling with. If you don't want it to be me then you need to show Arthur what I just saw."

It's exactly the right thing to say. He turns to Saito. "We need one more seat on the plane."

Saito flips open his phone, dials a number and murmurs something in Japanese. "It is done."

She walks into the hall. She looks down at her watch and is surprised that only ten minutes have passed since convincing Arthur to call Yusuf away. In ten minutes, she climbs a mountain and finds out she is flying to Australia. On first class, no less. Arthur falls in line beside her. "You wanted this to happen."

"I need this to happen", she corrects. She stops short. "And you guessed it might; hence, all the training."

He shrugs. "I'm the point man. It's my job to leave no stone unturned."

"Are you going to try to convince me it's still all about the money?"

He counters with: "Are you going to tell me it's just about pure creation?"

She glowers. "Good night, Arthur."

He tips an imaginary hat at her. "Good night, Ariadne."


	5. Children of an Idle Brain

Doth I disclaimeth too much? Probably not enough. I own none of these characters - although, I'm starting to think that perhaps they might own me.

* * *

**Chapter Five - Children of an Idle Brain**

_Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace! Thou talkst of nothing. _

_True, I talk of dreams._

- Romeo & Juliet, William Shakespeare

Two days before their flight to Sydney, Arthur hands her false identification documents. It is replete with a Canadian passport, driver's license and birth certificate. "Memorize this; although I don't think you'll get stopped. Nevertheless-"

"Be prepared", she finishes for him, absently, already rifling through the sheaves of paper and imprinting facts.

Meanwhile, they spend their remaining time in Paris dismantling whatever has been set up in the warehouse. "We can't leave any evidence behind", Cobb says. "Fischer can't ever find out that we tapped into his subconscious." The laptops are wiped clean, then taken apart, piece by piece and disposed of in different parts of town. The rooms in which they congregated empty themselves of personal items, furniture not originally there, even the smallest of trash. Any surface that might leave behind a fingerprint is wiped down. Yusuf drags in a large metal garbage can and they dump anything flammable into it. Ariadne watches her notes, sketches, models and blueprints burn into ash - now the only proof that she is the creator of these environments will exist in her memory and five others.

The night, really only hours, before they are supposed to meet at the airfield, she finds herself standing in front of an apartment she doesn't live in. She squares her shoulder and lifts a fist to knock only to falter when it is a breath away from actually making contact. It is late but she is afraid she won't have an opportunity like this again. She needs to know. She finally knocks. There is a long silence. She places her ear to the door and when it swings open, she hastens back a few steps. "I-I'm sorry. Hi. Hello."

She has never seen him in anything but tweed suits and now he is wearing a terrycloth bathrobe. He sees the suitcase on the floor. "Ariadne. It's late. What's going on?"

"I know it's late and I'm so sorry to bother you at this hour. I just had to see you before... well, before tomorrow. Can I come in?"

Miles moves aside to let her pass. "Of course, my dear. I've been worried about you. You have been very withdrawn lately; and I know that I'm to blame. Have a seat; I'll make us some tea."

She takes in his surroundings - dark wood furnishings, comfortable furniture, and books everywhere. His edition of Walden is lying next to his house keys on the parlor table. On a bookshelf, there is a framed photograph of a younger version of himself and a woman who could have been Mal's identical twin, holding a baby in her arms. Sinking into a plush chair, she accepts a hot mug and waits until he too has settled into his seat. "Professor, I'm flying out tomorrow with Dom."

His brow furrows. "I thought you were staying behind."

She shakes her head. "No. I can't. That's why I'm here. I'm worried - and I'm pretty sure Dom is, too, but he won't admit it. He's too focused on the prize to think clearly at this point. I've seen her, Professor - he's got a projection of Mal wandering inside his head with a lot of gunpowder and a very short fuse. She is a huge risk - not just for him, but for everyone else involved."

Miles slumps into his seat. "It's worse than I thought. He hasn't let go of her."

"He hasn't, unfortunately. He thinks he can control her, but, really, it's the other way around. I... I don't feel good about this. Whatever she wants from him, she'll do anything, even if that means sabotaging his only chance to get back home. I need your help."

Miles says, "I'll do anything I'm capable of, if you think it can make a difference. What do you need from me?"

She leans forward. "Dom told me you pioneered dream sharing - you're the one who introduced him into its study and field. I need you to tell me everything you know about it. I need to know about all the possibilities."

* * *

Saito, Cobb, Arthur and Yusuf are already at the hangar when she arrives. Cobb gives her a look. "Sorry - I had trouble finding a cab." She runs a hand over her face to push away the strands of hair which have escaped her ponytail.

"Next time, you should book one in advance", Yusuf advises, as they all make their way over to the plane.

She smiles brightly at him. "Right. That will certainly be on my checklist of 'To-Dos' the next time I'm involved in corporate espionage: reserve a limo." He jabs her in the shoulder with a finger.

The flight from Paris to Sydney is long, but Saito's private jet makes it almost comfortable. Their seats level out into beds and she takes advantage of it by spending some of the time sleeping (actually sleeping). If she dreams, she doesn't remember. She is grateful for that. Both Cobb and Arthur spend a majority of the plane ride relentlessly drilling the time sequence of events and then quizzing everyone over and over again. "What happens when we get to the first layer?"

By the fourth hour, Ariadne can see the response scribbled across the back of her eyelids - "Saito and Arthur hijack a cab; Eames finds Fischer; I join up with you and Yusuf. After Saito and Arthur pick up Eames and Fischer, we all meet at Rendezvous Point Astor."

"Good. Let's review the next part one more time." And so it goes.

Their plane touches down on Monday morning, 24 hours before Robert Fischer is scheduled to fly to Los Angeles. Ariadne steps down onto the field. It is a very warm day in Australia - she welcomes the heat after 25 hours of cold, recycled air. There are flight attendants on the ground with warm towels and cold pitchers of tea. "Welcome to Sydney, Mr. Saito", is the echo as they make their way to the black sedans that are waiting to bring them to their hotel. The back door of one of the cars swings open and Eames steps out.

Arthur eyes Eames and says, "Nice shirt." He almost sounds genuine about it.

"Thank you, Arthur my boy, I was channeling your taste when I bought it."

"I'll make sure not to wear my flower-print motif on the same day you do."

Eames gets a hearty slap on the back from Yusuf, and a handshake from the other men. He must have known about the change in plans, but he's grinning ear to ear when Ariadne walks up to greet him. She sticks out her hand. "Good to see you again, Eames-"

She can't finish because he has planted his mouth squarely over hers. Her whole body stiffens and she's about to push him away when he moves out of hitting range. "Ariadne, love! So glad you could join us! It wouldn't have been the same without you. I insist on having you all to myself on the lift over to the hotel." He clamps a hand on her arm, and steers her into the backseat of his car. She catches a glimpse of the others before the car pulls away. Mostly, they look entertained, confused or a mixture of both. She doesn't know which expression Arthur's got on since he is not facing her and all she can make out is the back of his head and a neck that is reddening from the sun.

"Did they run through what the plan is once we're all in?"

"Yes..."

"Good, let's see how much you've retained. Tell me about the first layer - darling, you sit any farther away from me and you'll be flapping against the outside of this car with your fingers hanging on the window."

"Do you mind telling me what that was about before?"

He raises an eyebrow and has the audacity to look clueless. "What?"

She splutters.

He holds up a hand. "Oh. That? What'd you expect from me? I'm European. There's no such thing as personal boundaries for us."

"The next time any part of you crosses any of my boundaries, the offending body part may not be attached to you for much longer."

"All right, all right. Message received. Can we get back to more pressing matters - now what could that be? Oh yes, that's right, the job?"

The penthouse is ready for them when they arrive at the hotel, and the hospitality staff have laid out a spread of fresh fruits and sandwiches. Eames debriefs them on the latest news about Robert Fischer and Peter Browning. He is also the one responsible for arranging the "faulty mechanics" status on Fischer's private plane. Ariadne is impressed with his thoroughness and understands Cobb risking exposure in Cobol territory to bring Eames on. Since it's the first time in a long time everyone has drilled together, they go under. However, after a certain point, all that can be done is wait. Cobb is a firm believer in not practicing up until the last minute - "We'll be nervous enough as it is. Take the rest of the evening to relax, so we'll all be at our best when it actually counts." He avoids looking at Ariadne; she looks at him anyway, hoping he can feel the waves of her emanating disapproval in how he will spend the evening.

They disperse, each seeking their own means of solace and relaxation. For Ariadne, she wanders throughout Sydney, intent to look at the buildings she has studied in school. She goes to the home of Neville Gruzman in Darlington, the Australia Square Tower and ends up at the Sydney Opera House. There is a warm breeze and the night is clear, and plenty of other tourists are lingering and pursuing similar goals. It is a jovial atmosphere by the opera house, which is expertly lit up to accentuate its curves. Groups are gathered on benches in its large and spacious plaza, and, food vendors are out and making a nice profit selling ice cream and grilled meat. People are probably talking about which restaurant to try for dinner, the next "must-see" destination to spectate, or maybe they're bemoaning the end of their vacation. She is rewinding all the information Mile imparted to her last night – and who was still imparting over the phone even as she was running out his front door, hailing a cab and during the entire ride leading up to the air field. She thinks about Eames' remark on inception - by its very nature, there cannot be advanced specificity. One simply must work with what presents itself along the way. All of these ideas and theories twist inside of her. She needs an outlet - she takes out her sketchbook and pencil. First, she forces her hand to outline the opera house; then, to focus on shade and illumination; and to worry about capturing its structural dimensions accurately. Eventually, her mind stops speeding and her breath evens. By the time she has finished the drawing, she is calm.

"Excuse me, but could you take a picture for my friends and I?" A young man is holding out his digital camera to her. He is gesturing with his free hand to where his six friends have already assembled into their poses.

"Oh, um, sure." She puts her pad to her side and takes the device. She waits until he appears in the frame and snaps several pictures of them.

"Thank you. Are you visiting too?" He is blond with a clean jaw line and incredibly tall. Coupled with his accent, she guesses that he hails from one of the Nordic countries.

She smiles. "No. Enjoy your stay here." He returns to his friends, his shoulders sagging slightly. In a few minutes, they pick up their things and move on. She watches them until they disappear from her line of sight. A part of her is more than a little flattered by his attempt, but the part that is in control right now is worried that they are somehow connected to Fischer. She may be the most inexperienced, but she will not be the faulty cog in this wheel.

She gets back to the penthouse late. Or, what she thinks is late. "Where's everybody?"

"Saito just turned in. Cobb's in his room. I haven't seen anyone else since earlier this evening. Did you eat yet?" Arthur is sitting in an armchair, an open book in his hands.

She walks over and plucks it from him. "I'm not hungry. Russian literature? I never would have guessed."

She hands the book back, but he shuts it and gets up. "Chekhov was the subject of my dissertation." He lifts the receiver off the phone. "Grilled cheese sandwich and a slice of strawberry shortcake. Thank you."

"I said I'm not hungry."

He quirks an eyebrow. "Who said it was for you?"

But when the food arrives, nestled in linen on fancy china and polished silverware, the smell wakes up her stomach and Ariadne eats most of it. As she mows her way through dessert, Arthur picks up his book and reads out loud one of the stories. She understands why he is a fan - Chekhov's writing style is very much like Arthur's character. "That was a good one. Not exactly sad, but... poignant."

"Chekhov had a way of reaching out to his audience - one of his words in a story held much more meaning than a dozen of them from many of his contemporaries."

"So I'm guessing you're a fan of Hemingway as well."

"His style, yes."

She puts her fork down. "Hemingway and Chekhov are all well and good, but have you ever thought about reading the works of authors whose subjects are a little more cheery? Might I suggest some J.K. Rowling?"

"There's a lot of death in her books - Cedric Diggory, Sirius, to name a few. It might end on a happy note, but the stories throughout contain lots of dark elements - especially after the first three novels."

A vision of Mal in Cobb's basement flashes before her. "Do you think that's how people generally recognize reality? Because happy endings seem too... happy? Neat?"

"A reality without loose ends generally leaves people with a sense of dissatisfaction - even if the results are favorable as a whole. There's nothing to reach for."

She looks him in the eyes. "But some people choose it." The air between them grows still.

"Yes." He then adds, "Some don't."

"How does a person get to this decision? To make a choice or not?"

"Sometimes a person doesn't realize it when he has. Sometimes it's already made for him."

"But the option is there? It exists? For everyone?"

"There's always a choice, Ariadne. No matter what anyone may say or how they may act." It's the first time he looks _tired_. "It's much too late to be waxing philosophy tonight."

They stand up and back away from the table just as Eames and Yusuf come crashing through the door. "Did we miss curfew?" Eames is obviously more than a little drunk.

"Don't tell me you've already gambled away your portion of the payout."

Yusuf says, "Oh, but it was a beautiful thing to watch, Arthur! This man should be on TV! Twenty thousand on one hand of roulet!"

"Ah, yes, and it could have turned into two hundred thousand with the odds. Come on, chap, don't be a bad sport. I evened out in the end. See?" Eames unlooses a handful of casino chips on the coffee table.

Arthur picks one up. Squints. "Right. That's supposed to be a second 'O', not a 'Q'."

"Bugger that. One of these days I'll invest in a dictionary. Until then, love birds, happy dreaming."

Ariadne yawns. "I'm turning in, too. Good night, everyone." As she heads inside her bedroom and closes her door, she peeks out to watch Arthur return to the armchair she found him in earlier. He picks up his book once more and resumes reading. Something in her settles as she watches the lamplight drape across his shoulders. She shuts the door fully and climbs into bed, reaching for her chess piece. She carefully runs her fingers over its curves and angles, admiring how it reflects the light dully and the way it warms in the cup of her hand. She sits and holds it for a few minutes; then, places it on the nightstand and closes her eyes, falling almost instantly into a contented, undisturbed sleep for the remainder of the night.


	6. There is No Spoon

We're almost getting there, aren't we? You know what I'm talking about... :)

Thank you to everyone who's commenting/following my story - you guys rock!

* * *

**Chapter Six: There is No Spoon**

_If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time._

- Marcel Proust

She wakes up, she goes to the bathroom, takes a shower, and gets dressed. She makes the bed, tucking and folding, smoothing and fluffing, until it looks like the maids have already gone through her room. Next, she clears her bathroom counter of her personal items, and scans the space one more time in case something is surreptitiously left behind. Out in the living area, most everyone is up and a breakfast spread has magically appeared. They are all unnaturally quiet - not anxious, but focused. Determined. Eames stands in front of a mirror hanging near the penthouse door, absorbed in the movement of his hands - how he holds his glasses, how his fingers rest just so on the lapels of his blazer, how they move when he speaks, which is also different. Ariadne blinks at the complete replacement of one accent for another.

The plan proceeds. They arrive at different times, in different cars, to the airport. They check in and wait in different areas. She wanders through the airport shops, reading the backs of novels, buying rolls of flavored antacids and a magazine. She represses the urge to noticeably lift her eyes at a familiar face. When the announcement is made that first-class passengers are now able to board, she is one of the first on line, debating the entire time if she should smile or take on a bored, elitist attitude. She ends up opting for the former - the attendants are irresistibly nice as they take her ticket and stow her suitcase away. Her seat is like an alien pod - there are speakers on the sides near her ears, and vents for warm and cool air. With a press of a button, her tray table unfolds itself from the left side across her lap. There are electrical outlets for charging laptops and chargers for all kinds of mobile phones. She presses another button and an ottoman materializes so she can prop her legs up.

Behind her, there is the shuffling of feet, slight vibrations as weight settles into seats and the snaps of belts being buckled. There is coughing and murmurs of acceptance or decline on the offer of complimentary champagne and fresh strawberries by flight attendants. The first-class cabin holds ten seats, but she doesn't turn around to check on her neighbors. Saito suddenly walks by and takes the seat directly in front of her; on her right, across the aisle, there is a bright blob that surely must be Cobb. She continues to flip lackadaisically through the in-flight magazine.

Then, there's the shuffle and a "Oh, I'm sorry." That's when she allows herself to peek at Cobb, sitting directly behind Fischer. She must not have been the only one because while he isn't making eye contact with any of them, he makes a thumb's sign up with one of his hands. Her bronchial tubes dilate and it's the first time all morning that she is able to draw a deep breath. She allows herself to make sparing glimpses at the man whose life she has studied like a college entrance exam. Seeing Fischer in person is disconcerting; she thought he'd be taller, for one. He's focused on his smartphone, and has the aura of a man who doesn't want to be disturbed.

Having never boarded a flight so early in her life, they are simply waiting for the main cabin to finish seating themselves. A second round of champagne is offered (this time, the flight attendant brings her seltzer) and she gets up to go to the bathroom, more to distract herself than to relieve a physical urge. It's good to know that even first-class cabin bathrooms are ridiculously small, even if it does have a nailed down bowl filled with individually wrapped chocolate mints. On the way back to her seat, she passes Arthur. He turns his head away from the window. Their eyes lock briefly. Then he's back to gazing out at the air strip. On the other side, Yusuf raises his glass of champagne to her, to which she responds with a faint, bemused shake of the head.

The plan proceeds - once they are in the air, Cobb continues with the next phase. She can't breathe again and stares at her TV screen until her eyes water. However, it is executed flawlessly - Cobb is suave without seeming insincere; he manages to appear both respectful and curious. Harmless. Fischer's voice is muted, low. She hates that she has to keep curbing the tendency to tack on the adjective "nice" to his description. Within twenty minutes, the target's head is lolling against his seat. The PASIV is brought out and Arthur has it set up and ready in his usual, no-nonsense manner. They administer the somnacin and he inserts the needle into Fischer's wrist. He then turns to Ariadne. She pushes up her sleeve and places her bare wrist in his hand. It is warm and dry. She knows her eyes are probably taking up half her face at the moment. "Time to take the blinders off."

"Now or never", she quips back, hoping that her tone sounds more breezy than it does trepidacious.

One of his hands has the needle poised right above the puncture zone; the other hand's thumb is gently tracing invisible lines from right to left, left to right on her exposed skin. "You can still turn back, you know."

She laughs. "What, and, miss out on all the fun? No. Give me the red pill."

She catches him smiling as he turns his head down. He presses the needle in. "Just remember, stick to the pla-"

It's raining. She is a wearing a sweatshirt underneath her jacket and she flips the hood over her head. A quick look at the street sign tells her she is about two blocks away from where Cobb is supposed to pick her up. Hunching her shoulders has as much to do with attracting as little attention as possible from the projections as it is in avoiding getting rain in her eyes. She hurries over to Water Street and stands at the curb, waiting and wondering if they have already moved on to the next phase. She begins to devise a way to get to Rendezvous Point Astor when an SUV pulls up in front of her. It's Cobb - she climbs into the passenger front seat. "Everybody in?"

"Yes, they just picked up Fischer five minutes ago. They're in a cab about a block away."

"And we've got everything ready for the next layer?"

Yusuf, sitting in the back, lifts the silver briefcase he is holding. "Yeah. I just need to mix the chemicals once we're stationary."

She sags back and is about to muse how remarkably smooth it is all going when they hear very distinct sounds to suggest that they may have to allow for some flexibility in the plan - pops and pings and the drill of automatic assault weapons. As they close in on Fischer's cab, the smell of smoke is laden over the rain. Cobb swears and accelerates the car forward, but before they advance three feet, a train slams into their front side, sending them spinning into oncoming traffic. He maneuvers the car in a way that would impress race car drivers and manages to avoid getting hit further. They wait, blind and deaf on what is happening on the other side of the train, a moving wall with no end in sight.

Her fingers clench into the seat belt strap across her chest. "This wasn't in the design." An insistent tapping in her mind keeps her fixated on the train, its frame, its coupling rods shuttling to and fro. She has seen this before. It is familiar, yet not quite a memory.

Cobb is hanging over the steering wheel, as if proximity will make the steam-engine locomotive run faster. He loses patience and slams the car in reverse, speeding in the opposite direction in which the train is moving. They finally reach a point where they can cross. "Hold on", is all he has time to say.

The cab with the rest of their team is boxed in by SUVs - Ariadne sees a projection point his rifle and fire. She doesn't even know if she screams or not; nothing registers except watching the cab's windows splinter into small, sharp shards that fan inward, outward. Cobb growls; they surge forward, and she flattens herself as far back into her seat as she can manage when it becomes apparent he is going to press deeper on the gas pedal the closer they get. They slam into the closest SUV with enough force that they surely would have cracked through the front window had it not been for the restraint of their seat belts. It is worth the ensuing whiplash, though, since it creates enough of an opening for Arthur, who is behind the wheel of the cab, to squeeze through.

Ariadne can't stop thinking _is everyone okay?_ and why the projections were so violently aggressive. They make Mal seem _neighborly_. Cobb runs red lights and drives in circles before they end up at Rendezvous Point Astor, an abandoned warehouse located in a desolate, industrialized part of town. They drive straight inside, past Eames who then slams the car door closed and everyone is exploding out of cars, with questions spilling from their mouths. Ariadne stops short when she sees blood on Arthur.

"Oh, Christ. Is he dying?" This from Cobb. For a second, she can't believe Cobb would ask Arthur that question about himself. Then she focuses on Saito who is lying on a table and his front side is soaked in blood. Her knees nearly buckle.

Arthur is saying something to her. She doesn't have to actually know the words to know what he is asking. His tone is terse, and he is standing with every tendon and muscle braced. _Train._ That's what he's asking about and it's what she is wondering about too. She has seen that train before but she doesn't remember from where. Could it have come from her subconscious? A memory she doesn't remember that, nonetheless, is buried deep within her?

"_Because we'll be together."_

A memory flashes. Not her memory.

"_I'll tell you a riddle." _

Her eyes swivel to Cobb - he is arguing, first with Arthur, then with Eames.

"_You're waiting for a train."_

Yusuf getting into the middle of it now.

"_A train that will take you far away."_

Arthur, angry. Eames, angry. Cobb, insistent.

"_You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don't know for sure. But... it doesn't matter."_

Cobb finally looking at her. Cobb, relentless. Fevered.

"_How can it not matter to you where that train will take you?"_

_

* * *

_

After it's been decided, although it's clear even to Ariadne that there really isn't much of a choice, to move forward with the plan, Arthur and Cobb set the stage for Eames in the next phase. She stays with Saito, following Arthur's instructions to put pressure on his gunshot wound in an attempt to slow the bleeding. "If this is a dream, I should be able to convince myself this is not happening", he says, panting in between every few words.

"Shh. Drink some water." She holds out a water bottle.

He sips from it and manages a weak laugh. "Even in a world where supposedly nothing is impossible, we find ways to limit ourselves." He looks around. "I wonder if I shall see my son here."

"What was his name?"

"Takeshi. He would have been a little older than you by now. Do you have any siblings?"

She tells him about her parents, her childhood, about walking through Central Park on weekends in the fall, and her grandfather moving in to live with her and her parents when her grandmother died. She talks about the two of them working on science fair projects, her father taking her to the zoo every Father's Day weekend, and how they were all there to see her graduate and all there again at the airport before she moved to Paris. She rambles on, because she doesn't know what else she can say that would provide him any small measure of reassurance or comfort.

Cobb comes out of the interrogation room, pulling the ski mask off as he says to Eames, "You're on. You've got an hour." She looks away for a moment and when she looks back, Peter Browning is sitting in the spot formerly occupied by Eames. He is fully in character - the way he gets up from the seat is clearly that of a man past his prime of youth and vigor. He lets out a scream. Then he and Cobb head back to Fischer; minutes later, Cobb and Arthur exit as part of the next phase of the plan.

"How's he doing?", Cobb asks. He looks concerned.

"He's in a lot of pain." The bandages are soaked - Ariadne isn't sure if it is Saito's body that is keeping the seeped blood warm or if that's from her hand. _If this is a dream, and I can make anything happen, then let some of my life force go to Saito_, she thinks. She closes her eyes and repeats the wish. Nothing happens.

Arthur stands on the other side of Saito and places his hand over the one Ariadne's got pressed down on the wound. She raises her eyelids at the contact; he is watching the shallow rise and fall of Saito's chest and noting his pallor and complexion.

"When we get you down to the next level, the pain will be less intense", Cobb tells Saito.

He's trying to assure the dying man, and, doing a terrible job out of it. Her hand slips away from Saito and she pulls Cobb into a quiet corner. "You might have convinced the rest of this team to carry on with the job. But they don't know the truth."

He looks at her, uneasy. "What truth?"

Even now, he attempts to hide from her. She's had enough handling him with any delicacy. It is obvious that diplomacy is not the way to go. She confronts him, demands the truth. About him, about how exactly Mal died, and what happened in limbo. It's gone on too long. She should have done this earlier. He must sense that he can't deflect her any more because he finally tells her . About the fifty years of pure creation they spent in limbo; about Mal's refusal to accept reality; and, about Mal's method to persuade him. Her death. Her suicide. This is the seat of Mal's power - Ariadne doesn't understand how Cobb can blame himself for something which Mal chose to do; no matter how much she tries to impress on him his innocence, and, the importance letting go of his guilt will do to his own well-being as well as the others who are now inextricably and unknowingly linked to it, he can't hear her. Or won't. She's so close to making a breakthrough - she can feel it, but the projections - his, Fischer's, Lord knows whom else's - have found them.

"We have to keep moving - Yusuf, start the van. You'll be driving", Cobb says. He severs their link, and reaches for the ski mask.

"Saito, I'm sorry about this. Lean on me." Arthur tries to load the injured man onto the van as quickly and painlessly as possible. Then he hands Ariadne a rifle and for once, she's glad of the mindless violence she engages in. She pretends they are all from Cobb – all his pain and fear and despair personified – and the more of them that go down, the easier the next layer will be. Yusuf joins her after igniting the van's engine; they shoot at as many projections trying to make their way closer into the warehouse.

Arthur and Cobb drag out Fischer. Once the sedation is applied and he is unconscious, Arthur calls out, "Ariadne! Yusuf! Get in - I'll take over." While she climbs in and straps herself securely into the seat, he and Eames work together to clear the area. Soon they are speeding out of the warehouse and down rain-slicked roads.

For the time being, there are no ominous SUVs tailing them. Eames reveals what he learns about Robert Fischer during the time he was imitating Browning. Ariadne has to remind herself that they are here to implant an idea in the target's mind; that being the case, she can't worry about how that idea will impact him, affect his relationships, change the course of his life. She can't think about how nice and sad he looked on the plane. She doesn't agree with the general opinion that Peter Browning is no more than some carrion bird, waiting to feed on the bounty left behind by Maurice Fischer. She wants to point out to Cobb, to Eames, both of them so smugly certain they are doing a _favor_ to Robert Fischer, that she shouldn't have to remind them - especially them - on the complexities of human nature. But Arthur sees that determined look on her face and he shakes his head at her, mouthing, "No." She snaps her jaws shut and stares out the window as the discussion on next steps flows on.

The PASIV is set up and a plan is formed. Eames, employing his unique skills, will be the first to approach Fischer in the second layer; once Fischer is sufficiently distracted, Cobb will establish the Mr. Charles ploy. Arthur, Saito and Ariadne will monitor the environment and keep low profiles, unless projections start a defensive course of action in which case they will engage to protect Cobb. When they receive the signal, they will move on to Rendezvous Point Bigelow.

This time as she is handed the tube and needle, Ariadne feels nothing but a hard knot of pressure and a certain detached distress that she is swimming in murky depths for which not only is there no bottom, but the line which connects her to the surface is drawing tighter around her neck. She closes her eyes, inhales a breath to fill her lungs, and dives in deeper.


	7. Of Them All

Though I don't own any of these characters, I love them and I hope it shows. I also hope you enjoy the latest chapter. Feel free to comment if you do.

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Of Them All**

_Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him? _

- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson

When Ariadne opens her eyes, her reflection is peering back at her. She turns around as the door swings open. The maid gives her a lackluster greeting as she passes, more intent on the cleaning job ahead of her. Ariadne turns on the faucet; after running her hands underneath the water, she exits into the lobby. The hotel is filled with people - bellboys pushing carts of luggage, tourists milling the area, armed with cameras and wearing souvenir t-shirts. She notes the signs indicating some sort of convention going on - there men and women in business casual moving in small herds to designated conference rooms. She finds Arthur sitting there on a bench not more than five yards from her. She joins him. "Do you see the others?"

He shakes his head; when she sits down beside him, he leans back while draping an arm on the top edge of the bench behind her. His pose is casual but his eyes are continually scanning the lobby. She fidgets. "Couldn't you have put me in a pant suit like everyone else?", she grumbles, as she uncrosses and recrosses her legs.

"I would have put everyone else in a skirt suit too but that seemed counterproductive to our attempts at subterfuge", he replies. He straightens. "And there goes Mr. Charles." Ariadne has already spotted Cobb's handsome figure striding past them, looking very much like that first day in the warehouse. This facet of him is much like the suit he is now wearing and the hotel they are sitting in and the people surrounding them.

There's something in the way he pronounces the name. She searches in her memory bank but doesn't remember anyone clarifying in the previous layer clarifying Mr. Charles' purpose. "Who, or what exactly, is Mr. Charles?"

He explains the gambit and its risks. "So now you've noticed how much time Cobb spends doing things he says never to do."

The projections continue about their business, with no notice to them at all. "Didn't you say that you've tried this before?"

He is sitting forward, his elbows resting on his knees. "Yes. We've tried this a few times, actually."

"Please tell me one of those times was successful." At his silence, she leans back and rubs a hand on her forehead. "Why keep trying then?" She struggles to maintain an even tone of voice.

"My guess? Cobb thinks that Fischer might be more susceptible to the ploy. You've studied him - he's a closet eternal optimist."

"Wait. How do you know that?"

"It's simple; if he weren't, he would have broken off ties to his father years ago. He would have gone on to start his own company to screw the old man, or, put up with his tirades without making such a public fuss. He certainly would have made more of an effort to keep up a pretense of the docile son. Up to his father's last breath, Robert Fischer was hoping for some kind of reconciliation or acknowledgment."

She reviews the data on Fischer and makes the connections. "How does this make him more likely to believe in Mr. Charles?"

Arthur sits up, causing her to look around. "Because he believes everyone possesses an inherent goodness within; and as a result, he has a predisposition to want to believe that Cobb is there to look out for him. And Cobb can be very convincing."

The air gets unnaturally thick. The projections cease their work, hands and words and feet frozen as they pause to swivel their heads around. A few stares are directed at them. It is uncanny each time this happens. The stares are devoid of any recognizable human expression - the mask slips away in these moments to reveal a primitive, protective instinct whose only objectives are to survive, and, attack. The hairs on the back of Ariadne's neck and arms rise as she accidentally looks a few projections in the eye. "What's happening?" Gravity is also starting to slant. She holds on to one end of the bench as they dip.

"Cobb's drawing Fischer's attention to the strangeness of the dream. Which is making his subconscious look for the dreamer. For me." He places a hand on the small of her back. She can feel the heat from his skin through her clothes, but her nerves are still skittering erratically. "Quick, give me a kiss."

She leans over, feels the soft exhalation of his breath preface her lips first. She tells herself it's just a dream and at any moment they could be surrounded by an angry mob or a train could burst in on them or they could be thrown back to the previous level. She tells herself this as her heart pounds and her blood crashes through her veins and arteries. She is tilting her head to angle up at the same time his is angling down; somehow, it all works out - their noses don't crash into each other; her top lip is sandwiched neatly in between the crease of his mouth. It's just a touch, a skimming, really. And they're both pulling back, when she realizes her eyes were closed. His are open and she gets the feeling he's been staring at her the whole time. She's never seen them so close before - they have flecks of hazel in them.

She turns her head, her hair grazing his nose. "They're still looking at us." She notices a buxom blond in a red dress heading away from the bar - the woman's expression, however, isn't hostile. It's... a leer?

He unfolds his long frame. "It was worth a shot." One corner of his mouth - a mouth that was just touching her own mouth - is shaped in the barest hint of a comma. "We should probably get out of here." It takes her a moment before she gets up as well.

Arthur leads them to a guest elevator - when the door slides open, they enter and shoot up to the fourth floor. He has his hands behind his back and he is gently rocking to and fro on his heels. "I wonder how Yusuf is faring up there", Ariadne says.

"It feels like the turbulence has leveled out some. And we're not being prematurely awakened. Those are all good signs."

The elevator doors are highly reflective. She looks at their images; Arthur's watching the floor indicators blink and then go out, blink and then go out as they climb further into the hotel. "What are you going to do while we're in the next layer?"

His eyes drop to hers. "I'll distract the projections until it's time. I have to keep moving as much as possible - they can sense me, even if they're not exactly sure where I am."

She bites her lip. "That's a lot of ground to cover. And a lot of people to evade."

He turns around to face her. "A lot of ground is beneficial. More options." He cups one of her shoulders with his hand. "I'll be ok." Doors that open sometimes can't be closed, she thinks, as he takes a small step closer. "Ariadne."

The elevator stops with a jolt; there is a whisper of air and a hallway decorated in red and gold reveals itself to them. His hand drops and she exits first. It's not until they've stepped out and the elevator has closed, that they see the two bulky men in dark suits and sunglasses at the other end of the hall. They have already been spotted. Arthur and Ariadne turn and start to walk in the opposite direction of the room. The pace of footfalls behind them increases. She closes her eyes; when she opens them again, she slips her hand into the back of her waistband and grips a Glock 17. She unlocks the safety and keeps it pointed away from her.

"Looks like you were paying attention during training", Arthur says. The gun in his hand has a silencer on it.

"After shooting myself in the foot that first time, yeah. You could say I learned my lesson about learning my lessons. I'm funny that way about ungodly, awful pain."

They turn a corner but he nudges her to keep moving until they get to a staircase. The door slams shut behind them with enough force to make her wince. So much for subterfuge. She should have expected it, but what with having to deal with Cobb's subconscious, Fischer's subconscious, and Saito getting shot, it simply slipped her mind. However, Arthur, as ever, hasn't. He must have the memory of an elephant. They are now standing on a large movie set. A troupe of dancers in feather boa headdresses and sparkling body suits walk by. She's still holding her gun but no one spares her a second glance. She follows Arthur and ducks behind a car. Through the rear view window, they see their pursuers appear and pause as they try to orient themselves. "Now." Arthur stands up and aims. One man falls to the ground before the second is aware of what's happened. Ariadne takes care of the other. A production assistant walking by sees the men fall, starts screaming and pointing in their direction. This starts a commotion - some people run for cover, others are trying to escape and a few head over to them.

"We probably should have created a less crowded trapdoor", Ariadne says over the din as they dash back towards where they came from.

A man comes charging at them, holding a hammer that is raised above his head. Arthur drops to the floor, slides like a professional baseball player and trips him. As the assailant goes down, Arthur is already back on his feet, and kicking away the weapon. He punches him in the head and knocks his attacker unconscious. They break into a full run.

As soon as they are back in the hotel hallway, Arthur kicks the door shut and stands in fighting stance for several minutes. While he is barely winded, Ariadne is bent over and noisily sawing in air through her mouth. When it becomes apparent no one else is going come through the door, he relaxes. He smooths away the crinkles and creases in his suit, brushes away specks of dust and dirt with his hand and runs a hand over his hair. "We've got to hurry. Cobb could be calling us any minute now."

A few minutes later, they arrive in front of room 491, where he produces the key card from a pocket inside his suit. When they enter, she closes the door and latches the deadbolt. She can't help but admire her own handiwork, while Arthur circles the room, staring at points in the ceiling. He places the backpack he's been carrying on the bed and takes out several blocks of C4. He checks the wires, fiddles with the timer and then places them on the vanity. He drags a chair to one corner of the room and climbs atop. Ariadne picks up an explosive and hands it to him. When it has been secured, Arthur then climbs down and proceeds to move the chair to another part of the room. They are nearly finished when his cellphone rings. "Yes. Got it." He hangs up and then says to Ariadne, "We're to meet Cobb upstairs after we're done here. Fischer's with him."

She hands him the last charge. "Do you use a timer?"

"No, I have to judge it myself. Once you're all asleep up in room 528, I wait until Yusuf starts his kick."

She is glad she's not in charge of waking anyone up. "How will you know?"

"His music warns me it's coming, then the van hitting the barrier of the bridge should be unmistakable - that's when I blow the floor out from underneath us and we get a nice synchronized kick. Too soon, and we won't get pulled out; too late and I won't be able to drop us."

"Why not?"

He jumps off the seat. "The van will be in free fall. I can't drop us with no gravity." He points at his watch. "Timing is everything. Speaking of which, let's go."

They arrive a few minutes before Cobb and Fischer. She gives the target an awkward half-wave as Cobb explains that they work for him. Arthur produces another key card and for Fischer's benefit, they act out that the room might be occupied and charge into it with their guns. Cobb searches underneath the bed and pulls out a silver suitcase. "You know what this is." Fischer looks at it - Ariadne can see the doubt wiggling around underneath his confusion.

There is a knock on the door and she looks through the peephole. A big smile breaks out on her face as she turns the knob. "Mr. Saito!" He is pale, but she doesn't care, because he is upright and intact.

Saito looks pleased. "Considering our circumstances, I think it is appropriate that we dispense with any further formalities. Please, call me Isamu. It is good to see you as well, Ari-chan."

She can't think of any better response than to bow at him. This time, it doesn't feel clumsy at all.

Eames ambles in after him. He waggles his eyebrows at her. "What a busy day we're all having, aren't we?", he says in a volume only she can hear as he passes.

But before she can follow the bread crumb he has intentionally dropped in front of her, they hear someone jiggling the door handle. It's Browning - and his presence confirms that their plan is working.

"Uncle Peter, what's going on?" She sees Fischer transform as he stares at the keycard with the numbers "528" printed across it. His eyes flash up at Peter Browning. "The kidnappers are working for you." It's a statement, not a question. His projection reacts flawlessly, playing right into Cobb's plans. She would have thought it was Eames posturing again, had it not been for the fact that Eames is literally standing in the same room.

"That will. I'm sorry, Robert, but it's his final insult. A challenge to build something for yourself. He's telling you that you aren't worthy of his achievements."

Fischer's shoulders cave in. As the seconds tick, Arthur's analysis floats up in Ariadne's memory. She watches the man absorb this belief - this _false_ belief - letting it permeate his subconscious with a damning finality. In front of her eyes, hope shrivels - it's grotesque to witness yet at the same time, she is dispassionately fascinated and compelled. When the mutation has finished, Fischer becomes a different man, a betrayed man. His anger sharpens him; it makes him driven, focused, tough. He becomes his father.

Cobb leans in to Fischer. "Let's do to him what he was going to do to you." His timing is spot on - he knows when and where to push the right button. "We'll penetrate his subconscious and find out what he doesn't want you to know." She starts to wonder if all along, he's been dangling a carrot stick in front of her nose just as he is doing with the target.

Fischer is, again, the first to go under. The moment he does, Ariadne says, "Wait - whose subconscious are we going into?" There's too many lies for her to swim through.

"Fischer's. I told him it was Browning's so he'd come with us as part of our team." Cobb is calmly tying Browning down to a chair as he says this.

"He's going to help us break into his own sub-conscious?", Arthur says. He sounds impressed.

At Cobb's affirmation, Ariadne sits back in astonishment. She looks at Cobb and then over to Eames. He gives her a wink - she is reminded of the leggy blond from downstairs - as he lies down on the floor. "Like I said, bloody brilliant, eh?" In seconds, he is out.

Before going under, she looks over at Browning - Arthur is standing in front of him. She sees the gun gleaming in its holster. "What are you going to do with him?", she asks.

"Let me worry about that. Go finish the job." It makes her think about the way he was in the trap door - fluid and quick. No doubts, no hesitation, just action.

Browning the projection is silent, afraid, his eyes pleading her not to go. She looks away. "Ok. I'll see you topside, then."

"Ariadne."

"Yes, Arthur?"

He waits. "It's not about the money."

She can't help herself; she is smiling as she goes under.


	8. Athwart Men's Noses

New chapter up! I actually had a lot of fun writing the interactions between Ariadne and Cobb. Hope you enjoy reading them too.

* * *

**Chapter Eight: Athwart Men's Noses**

_All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible._

-William Faulkner

The sensation of cold snaps her eyes open. "Cobb?"

He is standing next to her, a Goretex snowball. She has to say his name a few times before he registers. The others are standing nearby, decked out in ski gear and also all dressed in white. Cobb points downhill to the heavily guarded, concrete-slabbed fortress. "There. That's where you have to go."

Fischer's eyes travel in the direction of Cobb's finger. "If I go inside, I'll find out what Unc- what Peter is trying to hide from me about my father?"

Cobb nods. "That's right." Fischer looks past him to Ariadne. She swallows and dips her own head and tries to exude the same certainty.

He takes a deep breath. "Ok, exactly how are we going to get past all those armed guards?"

"We're going to divert their attention away from you. You'll break in and find out the truth before they even realize what's going on." He gestures to Eames and they move out of hearing distance from Fischer. He speaks in a lower volume. "You're the dreamer. I need you draw the security away from the complex. Run them around in circles outside."

Eames nods. "Mother would be proud I didn't put all those skiing lessons to waste after all." He pauses. "Wait. I'm the one who knows the layout. If I'm outside, then who guides Fischer in to the strong room?" He looks at Cobb. "You?" Just like Fischer, he locks into a stare with Ariadne over Cobb's shoulder. A part of her wonders if he wishes Arthur were here, too.

She offers. "I designed the place." She is switching lenses as she views the facility again. It's no longer about the maze, about the columns and beams and supporting structures. It's about thick walls and long hallways and finding the right hiding spots. She squares her shoulders at the prospect.

"No. You're with me."

She turns at this revelation. "I am?" He's been evading her for so long, she thinks that snow somehow got in her ears and distorted her hearing. He nods, and she finally notices the indent of folded skin between his eyes, the lines around his mouth. "What do you think you're going to find waiting for you down there?", she asks - only he can hear her.

He doesn't answer her. Instead, he turns to Saito, who nods. "I could do it."

"Eames, brief Saito on the route into the complex. What we're looking for is going to be in the most heavily fortified section. The north tower." He makes sure he steps well out of hearing range before they begin to discuss the way to get inside.

Turning back to Fischer, who is staring out at the building, Cobb says, "Mr. Fischer, you're going in with Saito."

Fischer glances at Saito, who is sweating and whose complexion is starting to match his clothes. "You're not coming with us?"

There's the slightest of hesitancy. Cobb recovers easily. "You have to do this on your own. You have to get in there, break into your godfather's mind and find out the truth about your father." He pulls out his radio and indicates Fischer's. "Keep this live at all times. I'll be listening in, covering you. The windows on the upper floors are big enough that I can cover you from that south tower."

Fischer's eyes are completely useless at filtering out any unwanted emotions. "O-okay. I'm ready to go."

They wait and watch as Saito and Fischer shunt off, kicking up powder white dust behind on their trails. When they become small dots in the distance, Eames pulls down his ski goggles and gives them a smile. "Well, I'm off then, dears. Cheerio."

"Keep your radio on!", Cobb reminds him, to which the other man lifts a gloved hand in acknowledgment. Then, with a heave, he is skimming down the side of the mountain, too, leaning left and right, making it all seem so effortless.

Ariadne turns to Cobb. "And what are you and I going to do?"

He shifts the long range rifle which is strapped to his back up front and pats it. "We're going to be snipers. They'll send a troop or two to chase after Eames, but they're not going to abandon the fortress. We'll close in and take out whoever's left to guard the castle."

They begin to walk through the vast white expanse. For the first ten minutes, the only sound comes from the crunch of their boots breaking the surface. Ariadne turns back to look at their footprints. Theirs is the only indication of human disturbance - occasionally she will notice the delicate patter of hoof prints leading to or from the nearest copse of trees. It amuses her to think that Eames' could conjure up so pristine a place as this.

"If this all goes according to plan, what are you going to do with yourself afterwards?", Cobb asks. It's the first time he's shown any curiosity about her life outside of her abilities as an architect.

She thinks. "I've got a project due in two weeks, for which I don't have any concepts or designs yet. So that's going to be my life until it's handed in." She's got a feeling, though, that it's going to be relatively less difficult than what was required from her for inception.

"You do know that if you wanted, you'd never need to lift a finger again and still be able to live comfortably for the rest of your natural life, don't you?"

"Sure. But what I want is to go back to Paris and work on my school project. Then I'll probably fly home. First class. I'm afraid this experience has forever ruined coach for me." He cracks a brief smile. She hesitates then says, "What about you?"

He doesn't answer for so long, she is almost ready to apologize. "I'll see my children. I'll make them dinner. We'll go to the zoo or the playground. Wherever. I'll walk them to school every day, without fail."

"And what about extraction?"

His eyes are like the landscape. "What about it?" For the next few minutes, their hike is in silence. "What about you? Has this experience ruined anything else for you?"

"You mean, am I going to turn into a dream junkie? Probably not. The subconscious is one scary place to visit. A little too intense, if you ask me."

He nods, but then remarks, "Too bad. You'd be a great extractor."

She laughs - the sound echoes and startles a few birds from their nests in the trees. "Don't try to recruit me, Dom. This isn't a career I'd willingly choose."

"Thought I'd try for Eames' sake. He's going to have one less team to work with after this."

"I'm not worried. Arthur's got his instinct, remember? Together, they'll find suitable replacements for you and me. If they don't end up killing each other first, that is."

"We'll see." He gives her an inscrutable glance. "Let's set up shop here. We can close in on the south tower once Saito and Fischer are in. Have your rifle out and ready." They are standing 20 yards away from a concrete watch tower. As they close in, they quickly dispose of the skeleton crew manning the tower without attracting notice from the fortress. At the top level, they set up their rifles to point at the fortress. Through telescopic lenses, they watch the pacing figures, waiting for Saito and Fischer to materialize.

Her mind is turning over their conversation and just as a little lightbulb starts to flicker to life, it is interrupted by a muted sound being emitted from somewhere. "What is that?"

"Cobb! Cobb! Are you hearing that?", the radio comes to life with Eames' staticky voice. "At first I thought I was imagining things."

Judging from the way Cobb is glaring up at the sky, Ariadne gets a sinking feeling. "No, it's music. Dammit."

"How long do we have?"

He is dismantling the gun from its position, slinging it back on his shoulder as he answers. "Yusuf's about ten seconds from the jump, which gives Arthur about three minutes, which give us about-"

"Sixty minutes." Her mind speeds at thought. Sixty minutes to get to the complex, run through the maze, and then breach the strong room. Sixty minutes with ducking, dodging, hiding, shooting and be shot at.

He must be thinking the same thing. How could he not? "The route you gave them, can they do it in under an hour?"

_If this were a movie. Maybe. _"I don't think so. They've still got to climb down to the middle terrace."

His eyes run rapidly left to right, constantly. He is gripping the radio, his fingers white. "They need a new route - a direct route."

The layout unfolds in her mind, layer upon layer. "The building's designed as a labyrinth." _Your specifications._

He lifts the radio to his mouth again. "Eames. Eames!" There is no answer. He swears and then turns to her.

"Did Eames add any features? A short cut or something?"

Her eyes grow large. "I shouldn't tell you. If Mal-"

He swipes her objections away with his hand. "There's no time! What did he add?"

She tells him about the air duct system that serves as the diameter of the maze, on ground level. She tells him even though everything inside of her is telling her not to, even though everything inside of her is also telling her he's right. He quickly radios Saito and she conveys the message. "Saito, we don't have enough time. Do you understand? You need to skip the maze. As soon as you reach the base, you'll see a large grate directly underneath the north tower." She quickly eyes Cobb; he has picked up her rifle and is gesturing her to follow him. She hopes he is doing his best not to listen to the details. "The ducts cut through the maze; you'll be able to get to the strong room in less than ten minutes that way."

They are outside and climb atop the nearest ski mobile. Within minutes they are cruising across the white landscape. Ariadne's grip tightens on Cobb's waist; the turbulence being kicked up by the ski mobile causes her teeth to chatter. It feels like only minutes have passed when they stop in front of the south tower, but the ground hasn't stopped shaking. Near the horizon, they see a curtain of white crumbling. "What was that?"

"The kick." Cobb is grim.

The radio buzzes. Eames' voice. "Cobb? Did we miss it?" He sounds out of breath.

"Yeah, we missed it."

"What the hell do we do now?" It's exactly what she's thinking.

That's when Cobb explains about the second kick, their backup plan. "When the van hits the water. I figure Arthur's got a couple of minutes and we've got about twenty. Eames, you've got to get down here. Meet up with Saito and Fischer."

Adrenaline and anxiety makes Ariadne take more risks. She charges through the entrance of the south tower and immobilizes two guards before Cobb is inside. "Don't get sloppy, we need to be more precise than ever", he advises as they take over the top of the tower and sets up his sniper rifle in the direction of the north tower. He fires and she watches three more men fall to the ground.

"These projections, they're parts of Fischer's subconscious?" She looks uneasily at the man lying dead a few feet away from her and she thinks about the two men she just killed below.

"Yeah."

"Are we destroying those parts of his mind?" It's not enough, she thinks, that they're rewiring his brain, it would be the nail in the coffin if they were ripping out pieces of it as well.

He shakes his head, peering through the cross hair lens of the rifle. "No, of course not. They're just projections."

She spots movement in the south tower. "There! I see them below!" This is it. Ariadne leans in closer, ignoring the pain in her knees and ankles from crouching. She can't breathe as Fischer approaches the locked room. _This is it._

A figure in white drops from the ceiling, strolling up behind Fischer, face obscured by a column in the ante chamber. "Come on... a little lower... a little-", Cobb is saying.

As his finger begins to exert pressure on the trigger, Ariadne fumbles for the radio. She screams into it, "Fischer, stop! It's a trap!" Only for some reason, he hasn't heard her. He must have turned the receiver off. She freezes - she recognizes the sway of the projection's movements, the lithe grace of her walk. "Cobb, that's not really her-"

He turns to her - not the smooth, charming Cobb, not the confident, daring Cobb, not even the manipulative, ambitious Cobb. He turns to her and she can picture him as a toddler. "How can you know that?"

"She is just a projection. Fischer is real!" She doesn't know how better to impress this vital, pivotal piece of information on him. So she reaches for her rifle, just as Mal shoots Fischer in the chest. Ariadne's not sure which one of them actually discharges their weapon - her or Cobb - and if they both did, whose bullet killed Mal. But she watches the body fall to the ground, a few feet away from Fischer's. She gets up, grabs Cobb by his sleeve. "Let's go! Before it's too late!" She pulls him up and drags him down the corridor; he follows almost complacently, stumbling and incoherent.

They make it to the north tower without any projections stopping them. Ariadne runs to Fischer and drops to her knees in front of him. He is lying much too still on the ground. Saito is propped up against a wall; the bleeding has started up again. Eames shows up seconds later. "What the bloody hell happened here?" He spots a defibrillator in one corner of the room, grabs it and brings it over to Fischer's prone body.

As he and Ariadne prepare to use it on Fischer, Cobb says, "Even if you could revive his body, his mind's trapped down there." He is kneeling by Mal, his hand touching her cheek. "It's over."

Eames and Cobb are talking, but there's a quiet roar inside of Ariadne's mind. All of her lessons are rushing back at her - Cobb's, Arthur's, Mile's. They are all mixing in, weaving in and out, making no sense and then making perfect sense. She's pulling them apart and then twisting them together. There's an answer - there's something. She knows it. She turns. Miles is standing outside, peering in through the window. She walks over to him, lifts up the pane so that there is nothing but cold air dividing them. "What is it, Professor? What am I missing?"

He looks like the last time she saw him, holding a mug of hot tea and wearing a terrycloth bathrobe. "Do you remember the mirrors? With Dom?"

Mirrors. Mirrors on the streets of Paris. Two doors of them, squaring off at each other, underneath elevated train tracks. Mirrors mirroring their images, extending - multiples of her and Cobb. Breaking into thousands of tiny little mirrors, each one rebounding from another one, creating infinitesimal copies of their duo. She looks up at Miles. "Infinity", she whispers.

He nods. "A very possible possibility, Ariadne."

The shards fall up, in the same slow manner Cobb made Paris explode, they piece themselves together again until she can see it as before. One plain sheet, her own image and Paris, staring back at her. When she pulls herself from the daydream, Miles is no longer there.

She runs back to Eames and Cobb. "There's still a way. We follow Fischer down-"

If they were topside, Eames would say something obnoxious and patronizing. But now they are just looking at her, and she's sure they're listening to her partly because maybe there's a little bit of hope left that she's not wrong. She stands at her straightest, the top of her head nearly surpassing their shoulders. "We're almost out of time", Eames says, cautiously.

"Down there they'll be enough time." As the words leave her mouth, her certainty grows. Something Arthur once said suddenly pops up: _It's hard to explain, but it's an instinct. In our line of work, you come to rely on it. A lot._ "We'll find him - as soon as you hear Arthur's music start, you use the defibrillator to revive Fischer. We'll give him his own kick from down below. Get him in there; then, as the music ends, you blow the hospital and we all ride the kick all the way back up through the layers."

The gleam is back in Eames' eyes. He gestures to Saito. "Saito can hold them off while I plant the rest of the charges."

Saito nods, panting at the effort. "Saito's not going to last, Eames."

There are too many things to worry about. She hopes Saito knows he's not at the bottom of their priorities but she doesn't have time to explain this to him. She turns to Cobb. "We have to try!" She wants to shake him, find that recklessness he has become synonymous for. He looks down at her, at the tubing that's suddenly appeared between them. She offers, holding her breath.

He takes it and lies down on the floor.

She notices the slight tremors running along his hands. "Can I trust you to do what's needed? Mal's down there..."

There's that uncategorized expression on his face that she's only seen once before. But his voice is normal when he says, "And I can find her. She'll have Fischer."

"How do you know?"

"She wants me to come after him. She wants me back down there with her." As she slips into further unconsciousness and she hears his words, she finally recognizes the emotion he's been holding back at last. She prays that she is wrong.


	9. Time and Weary Space

One more chapter to go - I'm feeling a little sad this story is coming to an end, but what's that saying about all good things? I haven't put a disclaimer in for a few chapters now, but I hope it's obvious that I don't own any characters from the film and am only fiddling with them since they are fiddling with me. Someone asked if I planned on continuing this story post-movie and at the moment, no. But then again, I never planned to write an Inception fanfiction either. So. :)

Oh, and thanks again for everyone who took the time to review/follow my story - you are awesome, awesome people!

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**Chapter Nine: Time and Weary Space**

_A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams._

-John Barrymore

Her hair is wet. In fact, every part of her is wet. She pulls her head up, before she can swallow any more salt water. Not far away there are two little children playing in the sand. Building castles. Dodging the tides. For a moment, she believes that she must have just fallen asleep. It is summer still, she is enjoying her time off before school starts again. She is staying at her grandfather's beach house in Ocean City - in a few minutes, she'll hear him call her name, as he gets the grill ready for their meal. She's had the strangest dreams, so complicated that she is still a little bit lost in them. A hand appears. She looks up at the man standing beside her; she wants to say to her neighbor she dreamt about him but he'll probably assume she's trying to flirt with him. He follows her line of sight and sees his children; his face twists and he hastily gives them the back of his head. He wiggles the fingers on his extended hand. "Ariadne."

Memories rush back at her. The warehouse in Paris. Rain in her hair. The stain of Saito's blood spreading across her hand. The sound of Arthur laughing. Everything clears. She reaches out and Dom easily hauls her upright.

"This is your world?" It is composed of diametrically opposing worlds that cannot possibly exist in the same space - mountains next door to equally tall skyscrapers, crumbling horizons upheld by fragile slate cliffs. Beaches that abruptly turn into hollow, sprawling metropolitan centers, that have French country homes and old Southern mansions interspersed on random streets.

"It was." He keeps staring ahead, and she has to double her pace to keep up with his strides.

What's eerie is the quiet, the solitude. There is no one else and she wonders where all the projections have gone. Have they buried themselves so deep within their own subconscious that they are now somehow able to control it? Or maybe it's all concentrated - akin to a large cobra that is poised for one final, deadly, and accurate strike. Ariadne isn't sure that the moisture she wicks away from her forehead is due to the ocean. When this over, she thinks, she'll appreciate the luxury of creating in reality, of parameters, of silly dreams without meaning, without consequence. But another part of her whispers that she won't be able to walk away so easily, that when the trivialities in her life overwhelm her, she'll find herself yearning for forbidden things, for people out of her reach. It tells her snidely that she won't be able to keep away, that she is curious just how deep into limbo can she go, how vast is the human mind. And that Cobb is right; she would be an excellent extractor, one of the best. She could have it - pursue this life, chase this dream. If she wanted it. If there wasn't a knot twisting inside of her every time she thought about invading someone else's mind, about the repercussions of manipulating their psyche. She might look the part, but it's really Fischer who can claim to be the most innocent out of them all.

They are now standing in front of a sleek building, the kind of space that would attract hip, young businesses that the more traditional ones would label as "upstarts". Cobb explains how he and Mal decided, while in limbo, to create a home which merged their fondness of corporate architecture with more simplistic living. Fifty years. She peers around the dusty yet oddly neat surroundings; nothing about the lobby leaves her with any sense of comfort. It's just chrome and steel and glass. If it had been her, it would have been a country inn by a rocky autumn coast. She turns her head; outside, she sees the concrete on the sidewalk crumbling into course sand, tufts of hard, yellow grass.

They reach the elevators. Once inside, Cobb says, "There's something you have to understand about me. About inception. You see, an idea is like a virus."

This is not the time for another lesson, she thinks to herself, as she watches him fill the gun with bullets. Her fingers are running warm up drills against her leg, reminding her of her childhood piano lessons. She nods, letting the words drift by, and doesn't interrupt the flow; instead she is thinking about limbo. A place of choice. Of pure and limitless creation. Anything could happen; it was their decision. A conscious acceptance or denial of what is or isn't. What should or could be. But not what is. Never what is.

He seems to sense her inattention and fixes her in a stare that makes her feel like a student who has been caught doodling on the desk or passing notes. "Resilient. Highly contagious, and an idea can grow. The smallest seed of an idea can grow to define or destroy your world."

The door slides open soundlessly and suddenly, they are in a home. In Cobb's kitchen. Mal sits, her back to them at the redwood table. She turns as they approach, the pad of her pointer finger caressing the sharp edge of a large knife. "The smallest idea, such as... 'Your world is not real.' A simple thought that changes everything." There's no triumph in her voice, but there is no hostility as she watches them enter.

Ariadne is holding Cobb's gun - and keeping Cobb in between herself and Mal. She steps cautiously into the living room but finds no one there. Outside, through the screened door that opens into the back porch, she sees Philippa and James. Mal calls to them and there's a split second there where Cobb freezes, where he doesn't move, and a light fills his face that Ariadne has never seen before except when it's gnarled amongst a myriad of darker emotions. Then his shoulders stiffen and he is turning around, giving his children - their projections, Ariadne reminds herself - his back. The line between his eyes has reappeared.

Mal's voice is soft and soothing. She can imagine Philippa and James, curled on each side of their mother on a fluffy bed, eyelids flutter as she reads from a thick, leatherbound book in that tone. "What if I'm what's real? You keep telling yourself what you know... but what do you believe? What do you feel?"

It's not so much what Cobb says as it is the way he says the words. The way he sits down and takes Mal's hand. Rubs it between his own. "Guilt. I feel guilt. And however confused I might get, however lost I might seem, it's always there. Telling me something. Reminding me of the truth."

As it always seems to be when Mal and Cobb are together, Ariadne has the feeling that she's intruding on something that should be private between husband and wife, but she realizes that even though Cobb is facing Mal, the words, the confession, is directed at her. As the words spill from him, Ariadne sees the memories burst forth from his subconscious onto the smooth reflective surfaces surrounding them.

"We'd become lost in here." On the glass coffee table, Mal and Cobb building sandcastles, moving mountains, demolishing cliffs.

"Living in a world of infinite possibilities. A world where we were gods. I realized we needed to escape, but she'd locked away her knowledge of the unreality of this world." Mal in a girl's bedroom, opening up a dollhouse, revealing an unlocked safe. Placing a spinning top inside the vault and closing the door.

"I couldn't make Mal understand that we needed to break free." Outside, a storm begins to gather. Ariadne cranes her neck, lowers her arm under the weight of the gun. At the moment, Mal poses no threat, as she stares at Cobb, her face as lost as his words. "And when I found that place, that secret place where she had shut away her knowledge years before, I broke it open."

The French country house they passed, the one Cobb said Mal grew up in. The one he didn't want to go in. There is no daylight left outside - it is a mess of grey and black clouds. She hears a faint rumbling in the far distance. The humidity lays itself over her. Down the hall, she sees the bedrooms with their doors ajar. Fischer could be in any of these rooms. They're running out of time.

"I broke into the deepest recess of her mind, to give her the simplest little idea."

A simple idea. It sounds so innocent. Was she ever like that? Mal sits back, shaking her head and struggling as Cobb pushes on. He is an unstoppable freight train. "You killed me." She pulls her hand free from him. "You infected my mind. You betrayed me. But you can make amends. You can still keep your promise. We can still be together... right here. In our world. The world we built together."

Cobb doesn't move except for the ticking in the hinge of his jaw. Ariadne waits. But all he does is stare back at Mal, who sits, expectant. Seconds turn into minutes. She opens her mouth and shuts it when Mal's eyes swivel to hers. She takes a step back as Mal reaches for the knife again. Then she hears the roll of thunder, the flash of lightning. She straightens; despite the weakness in her knees and how hard her heart is pounding, she forces herself to move her eyes back to Mal's, forces herself to move closer into the viper's den. _She can't hurt you. Not really. _She places a hand on Cobb's shoulder; Mal's eyes flash as Ariadne makes contact. It takes all her willpower not to pull away. Instead, she clears the frog in her throat and says as authoritatively as she can manage, "We need Fischer." She squeezes, trying to break Cobb free from the spell he is under.

The expression on Mal's face is almost coquettish. "You can't have him." It's clear to Ariadne that her attempts to negotiate will be futile. She keeps her face blank but she is digging her nails into Cobb. She clenches until her own fingers hurt.

Cobb starts. He stands up; so does Mal. "If I stay, can she take him back?" He is calm.

Ariadne is not. "Cobb, what are you saying?"

Mal smiles, the hand holding the knife drops to her side. "Fischer's on the porch."

Ariadne is shaking her head. This is insane. "You can't do this."

He is holding Mal by the shoulders. "Go check he's alive, Ariadne."

She stares at him for a second, and then runs to the other porch, where she notices a body in the corner. Fischer's eyes are open and he is bound and gagged with duct tape. She rips the tape off his mouth. "Where am I?"

She runs her hands over him, to make sure he is intact. "You're in limbo. We're getting you out of here. There's no time to explain. You're going to have trust me, ok?"

"Trust you with what?", he calls out, struggling to sit up as she stands up and turns back towards the inside of the house.

The wind has started to pick up and another jagged line of lightning curdles across the sky. "He's here. And it's time. But you have to come with us. I'm not going to let you lose yourself here. You have to get back to your children!"

He won't turn away from Mal. "Send Fischer, I have to stay."

She swears, loud and long. It seems to work in drawing his focus to her. "You can't stay here to be with her."

But his eyes are clear. His expression is not that of desperation nor of hope. "I'm not. Saito is dead by now. That means he's here. I have to stay here and find him." He faces Mal again. Runs his hand over her dark hair. Touches her face. He sounds sad when he says, "I can't stay here to be with her because she's not real."

Mal jerks away from him, the air around her trembling with tension. "Not real? I'm the only thing you do believe in anymore."

Ariadne can't see his face but she doesn't have to. She can hear it in his voice. _Do you know what it is to be a lover? To be half of a whole? _"I wish you were. But I couldn't make you real. I'm not capable of imagining you in all your complexity... You're a shade. And I'm sorry, but you're just not good enough."

Lightning strikes. Mal moves. The blade of the knife gleams with refracted light as it arcs up. Ariadne moves swiftly, without thinking, without hesitation. Quick, efficient. Mal is suddenly on the floor, blood spreading from her shoulder. Ariadne keeps the gun at a lowered angle as Cobb whirls around to her. "What are you doing?"

She hardly knows herself. She's feeling reckless. "Improvising." Then she's dropping the gun on the floor and with a strength fueled by adrenaline and fear, she's hauling Fischer upright. She looks him in the eye. "Remember, you've got to trust me." She doesn't even give him a chance to react or respond before throwing him off the ledge. She watches him fall as thunder and lightning simultaneously roll and sound.

She turns back to Cobb. He nods at her. "That's the kick. You have to go."

"You're coming?" She didn't mean for it to come out as a question, but it does. She glimpses over at Mal, who is breathing shallowly, hand clutching her wound, and, watching them. Watching them with those eerie, owl eyes. It's a pity, Ariadne realizes, she'll never be able to separate the real Mal from this projection. She'll never be able to appreciate the woman who was. And she really wants to, because she is sure that that woman, the real person, was someone incredible and warm and kind. "Don't lose yourself. Find Saito. And bring him back." There's a million other things she wants to tell him. This can't be goodbye. This isn't the way things are supposed to end. What is she supposed to tell Miles, Philippa and James if he doesn't wake up? What is she supposed to tell Arthur? He can't forget. There are too many people waiting for him to come back.

Cobb gives her a look - is it a goodbye? Is it to reassure? "I will."

She doesn't have any more time. She backs a few steps into the house and closes her eyes. She shuts off all the circuits that are bounding back and forth in her mind. Before she can talk herself out of it, she runs off the ledge, at her fastest sprint. Her arms spread like wings, her legs scissor back and forth. She feels weightless for a split second and then the rush of gravity grabs at her, pulls her down at a speed that rips the scream away from her throat -


	10. A Thread Too Slender

**Chapter Ten: A Thread Too Slender**

_Everything you can imagine is real. _

- Pablo Picasso

She wakes up. She wakes up. She wakes up.

Water is rushing into her lungs. She stops breathing and struggles to loosen the seat belt trapping her into the van. Hands reach out and help to unsnap the buckle. And then they're passing an oxygen mask over her mouth; she sucks in the air greedily. She gives Arthur a squeeze on the arm and nods. He returns the gesture before moving to check on Saito and Cobb. She sees Fischer nearly at the surface of the river, with Eames trailing behind him, the disguise of Browning in place.

Yusuf pulls a third oxygen tank from underneath the front passenger seat and passes it to Ariadne. She maneuvers next to Saito, and slips the mask over his face, turning the air on. Bubbles leak out from the side. Then she turns to Cobb; Arthur is checking his pulse. She grabs his arm and he drops back, allowing her to move the oxygen mask from his face to Cobb's. There are barely any bubbles escaping as the sleeping man breathes in the proffered air. They watch him for a few seconds; Arthur's eyes are full of questions but he doesn't spare a look back when Ariadne points her finger up. They move to the front side where Yusuf is with the last air tank. Each of them share equal sips of air as they slowly climb out of the van and swim their way back to the surface. Arthur hands them ski masks to don over their heads before breaking out of the water, in case Eames is unsuccessful in convincing Fischer to flee from the scene. However, there's no one watching them. Ariadne gasps and rips the heavy fabric away from her face. They paddle to the closest point of shore. Arthur reaches land first; he helps Yusuf and Ariadne stagger onto it. Then all three of them collapse against the pebbly bank, their lungs working hard and limbs weak.

"Is everyone alright?" They nod at Arthur's question. "How much longer before the somnacin wears off?"

Yusuf checks his watch. "An hour or two here. Maybe less."

Ariadne wants to groan but she doesn't have the energy. Instead, she takes a deep breath and focuses on the next steps of the plan. "Ok, where are we in relation to the car?"

Yusuf fishes out another set of keys from his pocket. "I don't think we're too far away."

After they imagine themselves from clammy cold to dry, Yusuf walks off, looking left and right. Arthur and Ariadne stay behind, keeping out of sight, and after a few minutes they head towards the agreed rendezvous point. He turns to her without preamble. "What happened?"

"Cobb stayed." His eyebrows lift.

"With Mal?"

"No. To find Saito."

He shakes his head. "I should have been down there with you and Cobb. I knew it was a bad idea to make me the dreamer in the second level."

She puts her hand on his shoulder. "It worked. We got Fischer out. Cobb's looking for Saito now."

He is staring at the currents in the river. His hands are gripping one another. "Do you think they'll make it out?"

Cobb's face in those last seconds flash in her memory. Mal, on the floor and the smell of gunpowder; there is a curtain hanging between all of them - filled with guilt, fear, shame and secrets. Always secrets. Ariadne meets Arthur's eyes - she wonders if her own remind him of Cobb's now. He looks back at her, and he's not doing anything out of the ordinary but the door that was ajar is suddenly wide open and relief is pouring out of her. "Arthur, I have something to tell you." And as they make their way to Yusuf who is waiting for them in an unmarked sedan, she finally tells him everything - she doesn't leave anything out. And he walks with her, stands with her, sits with her, nodding and listening and not interrupting. They arrive at their final destination - the marina - where they board a frigate and sail off, waiting for the time to wind down. She finally stops talking and waits for his response.

Arthur is sitting back, eyes closed and face turned upwards. They are on deck; Yusuf is manning the steering wheel. They pass a few other boats with projections who ignore them completely. The storm has finally cleared and though the winds are still a little rough, there is sunlight and beneath the dissipating clouds, the sky is a gentle blue.

"You know, technically speaking, I was the one who sent for you, not Cobb." He cracks one eye open at her.

She doesn't know where's he going with this, but she knows enough not to ask if he had been listening to her. "How so?"

"When Cobb told me he was going to Paris, to look for a new architect - I knew who he would visit. Who he always goes to see if he's in the area. Miles. So I called him and told him what we were up to."

She blinks. "You know Professor Laraby?"

He continues. "He didn't tell me what resulted from Cobb's visit. But, the first day you showed up, I knew."

"Knew what?"

"That Miles had finally found the right person. That one way or the other, this was going to be our last job together."

What did he mean by that? But there's another question pressing her right now. "Who else did Miles send?"

He points to himself in a self deprecating manner. Of course. She should have figured that out from the get-go. "Most everyone involved in this business - legal or not - knows him." Both eyes are open now. "What?"

She is smiling. "It's not about the money."

"Nor is it about pure creation." His face mirrors her own.

Yusuf chimes, "But those are nice perks, eh?" He sets the steering wheel on auto pilot and joins them on the deck.

"It's time?" Ariadne almost feels sad as she says this.

He nods. "Mates, it's been unreal. See you on the other side!", Yusuf says and then leaps into the water. He makes a large and loud splash.

"He'll be lost", Arthur says, staring at some unknown point.

On a whim, she holds out her hand to him. He looks down at it. "No. He'll be alright." He takes it. Grips it tight. Tangles his fingers in hers. Into the cold and wet they plunge; she turns her head towards him to let out an exuberant shout -

She wakes up.

The pilot is speaking over the public announcement system about landing in twenty minutes. The PASIV has been stowed away and the only sound in the cabin is the push of circulating air. Fischer is staring out the window. Ariadne swivels her chair - Cobb's eyes are closed. He looks peaceful; the description makes her wince. When she glimpses at Arthur, he is grave, apprehensive, facing her side of the cabin but his eyes are trained at the chair where Saito is sitting in. It's obvious from Arthur's face that the other man has not woken up yet. When his eyes pass her, he gives her a polite smile. She returns it; hers is quizzical.

A flight attendant blocks her vision of Cobb. "Hot towel, sir?"

Ariadne's hands tighten on the arm rests. Then the attendant is turning to her, asking the same question. She looks at the neatly stacked pile of white towels. Was there one extra before? She shakes her head and cranes her neck as the woman moves away.

She shares a moment with him across the aisle in which an understanding is reached when a decade-long friendship would not have been able to accomplish. Cobb, all his layers gone. The tension in her fingers suddenly pop free. She hears movement - and the distinctive click of a telephone being picked up. Saito, speaking quietly into it.

The phone in front of her seat is flashing. She turns. Behind, in the last seat of the cabin, she sees Eames' eyes peeking above the top of the seat in front of him. He's got a phone pressed to one side of his head. She turns to face the front again and answers the call. "Hello?"

"I know what you're up to, you know." He speaks softly, like a lover.

"What are you talking about?"

"You're a do-gooder. You may have charmed everyone else on this team, but it's not going to work on me. Not one bit, do you understand?"

She rolls her eyes. "I would hardly say that's been the case."

"Want to share a cab when we land? I've got an interesting project I want to talk to you about."

She giggles and then hangs up on him. She suppresses full out laughter when she hears his rather loud and disgruntled, "How rude."

When they disembark, her legs feel like jelly from not having moved. Fischer steps off the plane first, allowing the team to linger and share a moment of quiet triumph. There's nothing more. She trails behind Yusuf and Arthur, while Saito walks with Cobb. She wonders what it took to bring him back; but then again, this is Cobb, bloody brilliant Cobb. They all hold their breaths collectively as he hands his passport to the Customs official, but he passes. He passes them all, and, the last glimpse Ariadne has of him is of his back as he hurries over to Miles.

"Arthur." He turns. He looks like any ordinary business man,with a laptop bag strapped over one shoulder and a garment bag gripped in the opposite hand. Something fierce rips inside of her. "Where are you going?"

"I've got a place to stay here." He looks slightly uncomfortable about the way she walks with him. Like it's against the rules or something.

"Relax. Fischer's long gone. I checked."

"You can never be too certain in this business, Ariadne."

They are outside. He is turning towards the taxi queue. He's going to slip away, just like that. The way it was planned, the way it was meant to be. Maybe she'd hear from him a year from now. Probably not. She doubts that they have reunions for this sort of thing. She thinks about letting him go, without a good bye.

Her hand is reaching out and grabbing his sleeve. "Stop. Just stop, Arthur." He does. He shifts so the garment bag is slung over his shoulder. Straightens. She notices the second he spares at her mouth. It is enough. "I'm certain."

"What?"

"You heard me." She jabs her finger into his chest. "And I know what you were up to before, in the hotel. The next time you want to rile Eames up, kiss him, not me."

It's interesting to watch the red creep from his neck to his face. It looks like he has a rash. Or a deep sunburn. "I'm sorry. I should have let you know about that."

"Yes, you should have." They stand there, awkwardly. There aren''t any people around them - they seem to have thrown up a force field between the two of them warning everyone silently to keep at a ten foot radius.

She wonders if she's going to have to do all the work when he brings a hand up to rub his neck. "It was a poor pretense, wasn't it." He lifts his head and gives her a rueful half grin.

She can't breathe. She's afraid to. "Yes", she manages. "Pretty awful, actually."

And just like that, he's back to solemn. "Before, what I said. I was lying."

She thinks about all the things he's told her. Which one is a lie? She braces herself. "Ok."

He sets down his laptop bag, drops the garment bag. "I don't know where I'm going."

He's got to stop giving her these mini heart attacks. She knows the grin she's giving him is inappropriately wide for the remark. "Is that all? I have no idea where I'm going either. I was just going to wander around, see what happens."

He gives her a look - it's - admiration - maybe a little envy. "You make it sound so easy."

"Not everything requires months of planning and research, Arthur. Sometimes it's nice to to not know what's waiting around the corner."

He hasn't moved any closer but she has the feeling he is checking himself. "You know I don't work that way." She drops her eyes, feeling silly. What did she expect him to say or do? But then he adds, "At least, I've never worked that way before."

She takes a tentative step closer. His pupils dilate slightly. "Maybe you just need someone to show you how it's done."

He slants his head. "I'd need someone very patient. She'd have to know I'm completely new at this. Probably be stuck with me for awhile."

She points a thumb at herself. "You're lucky I'm the whole package, then. Otherwise, you'd have a hard time finding yourself another perfect specimen."

He's smiling fully again. How is it that she's only seen him do that a handful of times? He breaches the boundary of her acceptable personal space. His eyebrow lifts. "You, huh?" All of her nerves scream as he draws closer still.

"Yeah, me. Definitely." Her head is tilting up to keep from breaking the stare.

Arthur's hand raises and his fingers trail down a few strands of her hair along her temple. She must be radiating her emotions - they play across his face like a shadow puppet show, in the crinkle of lines around his eyes and mouth, in the way he looks at her. Her eyes start stinging from not blinking. She's afraid to, but she finally does, quickly. He is still there. He swallows and she can see his Adam's apple bob. "Are you sure?"

He doesn't say the words but she knows he's referring to Cobb, possibly even Eames. "I don't want broken, Arthur. I don't want meaningless charm, or, trickery." And you're none of those, she wants to say. She takes another step toward him. Her hand is the compounded weight of all the hands in the world, but she manages to heft it onto his chest. Instantly, his heart is leaping. Hers is roaring in her ears.

He places his own hand to cover hers. Gently curls his fingers - it feels just as she dreamed - warm, dry, slightly calloused. Just like in the dream, but also completely unlike the dream. "Everybody's broken in some way, Ariadne."

She leans in still more. "Don't quibble with me, Arthur. You know what I mean."

He makes that odd-sounding laughter at the back of his throat before closing the small distance left between their mouths. A million things run through her head as this is happening – she thinks about reality and unreality, about what it means to be real, not to be real. She thinks about decisions and the choices that a person will make, consciously and subconsciously. She thinks about memory and truth and perception. She thinks about the look on Cobb's face when he will finally see his children; about Arthur's arms tightening around her waist, his lips insistent, impatient; the way she knows that if she were to roll up his sleeves she wouldn't find anything there; and, without opening her own that his eyes are closed too. She thinks about returning to Paris; waking up in the morning; finishing school; starting her life and building her dream. She thinks until she chooses to stop thinking, and she lets the current that is a river that is a flooding that is a feeling sweep her away.

* * *

AN: Well, that's it. For now. For awhile, methinks. I hoped you enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. What's next? I'm going to focus on my own characters and own stories, but something tells me that Arthur is going to come back for another visit. That'll be a fun challenge! Until then, happy reading!


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